Shoplifters

So, after years of films put forward, Kore-eda Hirozaku finally scooped the big prize at this year's Cannes festival, claiming the Palme d'Or for his latest "Shoplifters". Coming a matter of months after the multiple successes of "The Third Murder" at the domestic Academy awards in Japan, he is adding medals to years of critical acclaim. But how does his most prized film sit among the rest of an oeuvre in which a bad film has yet to materialise?

Well, as if a "Nobody Knows" of adults, "Shoplifters" shows a "family" of acquaintances, brought together by a similar social status and treatment by their more traditional families. "Grandmother" Hatsue (the late Kirin Kiki), oversees her "son" Osamu (Lily Franky), his younger "wife" Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), her "sister" Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) and the couple's "son" Shota (Jyo Kairi).

After a session of successful five-finger discount, Osamu and Shota walk home passed the again-left-out-in-the-cold Yuri (Miyu Sasaki). Offering her food and warmth, they soon realise they will need to return her to her rightful home. But as they are about to do so, her parents' arguing can be heard, and Nobuyo can't bring herself to leave her in an unloving household. The couple, therefore, have just given birth to their second child and latest family member.

But what they can offer in a loving home cannot be matched financially. They all live in a one room shack, sleeping on top of each other. Osamu has a low-paying job in construction, but soon finds himself injured and out of work. Nobuyo works in a laundry service, but finds herself in the same scenario. Aki is the only real earner, but working in a peep show flaunting her bits, and as such does not share her keep with the others. The family's main livelihood, therefore, comes from Hatsue's pension and low-level thievery. Osamu and Shota are the main protagonists in this line of work, and Yuri is brought in on their game.

But a financial and family structure such as this can only stay stable for so long. Caught in the act, an accident during escape sees a hospitalisation, leading to arrests, prompting confessions, resulting in the end.

Kore-eda always poses a question in his films, to which there is no immediate answer. Here it is as to the bind that keeps families together. While they have no blood ties, in "taking in" Yuri, they treat her better than her parents ever will, with more love and dedication. They have little to offer any new family members, but all seem happy with the situation, despite all having lives that one would seek to avoid. This is closer than the relations the depicted blood relatives offer each other.

The "Shibatas" are together by choice rather than forcibly by blood, with their post-modern solution a seemingly better option against tradition. But blood ties will always be there, and the choice to walk away from the Shibatas is also true. On arriving, Yuri is given the option to stay or return to her family; and once the authorities become involved, there are perhaps deceptions in all of them.

Shota gets caught on purpose, knowing it could result in their demise; Osamu and Nobuyo's killing in self-defence of her ex-husband is revealed; Hatsue and Aki have former family connections, Hatsue claiming money off Aki's parents on the sly; and with Shota lying in hospital ready for questioning, the others plot their escape, leaving him alone. The "family" is perhaps no more than a convenience for the criminal, low paid and deceiving, with little actually known as to those they share a floor with. But once legally put to rights, all show that the artificial family they'd created was perhaps preferable to the alternative. With no blood ties, they had to be more careful and considered in their behaviour to each other and what is said and revealed, leaving a happier compromise.

As ever, Kore-eda's slow pacing allows for a succession of detailed and delicate shots to build the story, as well as your knowledge of Lily Franky's buttocks. The end, however, is a confessional, each revealing their story to the police in individual interviews (partly conducted by Kengo "...Yonosuke" Kora). Though these are not designed to pull too tightly on the heart strings. As with "Nobody Knows", the everyday nature of the reactions, again perhaps a nod to the reaction and treatment of the lower classes and underclass in modern society: unseen and treated with indifference.

Their family unit is not allowed to survive in the legal system; the poor and destitute barely able to survive under it also. And following on from "The Third Murder", Kore-eda again questions the nature of justice: The Shibata's "kidnap" Yuri, but treat her better than her parents ever would, though they are the convenient scapegoat.

Featuring good performances throughout from some old reliables as well as some new names, there is undoubtedly a lot of expectation sat on "Shoplifters". The truth is that it is not his best film, but is definitely up there in a career of high standards, though perhaps doesn't leave as much of an impression as some that have come before it. But in an era of dropping standards, this is certainly the best new film I have seen this year, cementing that his is one of the best talents in contemporary cinema and justifying those awards.

After the Storm

While not yet proving to be quite as prolific as the great masters Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse at their most busy, there is becoming something routine about another year and another trip to Cannes for perhaps Japan's best current working director, Kore-eda Hirokazu. There is a clear progression from his bleakly haunting first three films, 'Maborosi', 'After Life' and 'Distance' to a more routine playground of 'shomin-geki' (lower-middle class family drama), moving from more complex ennui to a more mainstream exploration of various unusual family scenarios.

'After the Storm', the most recent lover he took with him to southern France, certainly feels like a follow-on from his previous works 'Still Walking' and 'Kiseki'. Here, the family get-together of 'Still Walking' is replaced by the impromptu night-in to weather the storm, with Kirin Kiki and Hiroshi Abe reprising their roles as mother and prodigal son; and 'Kiseki's' Koichi is replaced by Abe's Ryota: a grown man who can't move on from his divorce from his wife and son, Kyoko and Shingo. With the cast also featuring other now established Kore-eda 'family' members, in the form of Lili Franky and Yoko Maki, this could all start to feel a little too familiar. Though he would not be the first great director to embrace this approach.

Suitably unshaven, Ryota is a recent divorcee, struggling to come to terms with his new position. A former novelist, enjoying some minor success with his novel 'The Empty Table' fifteen years previous, he now finds himself working as a private detective, betraying the trust of both his boss and untrustworthy clients; gambling heavily, living alone. Not only losing his wife and son, he has lost the respect of others, and even himself. His ex-wife can't rely on him to pay child support; his sister believes he is only after their mother's meagre funds; and his boss knows he is moonlighting behind his back. The only ones showing any positivity towards him are his mother, in the form of witty banter about how useless he has become, much like his father; his work colleague, Kento, who begrudgingly lends him money to gamble away; and his son, whose indifference to him is as good as he can get.

His attempts to win Kyoko and Shingo back, in his sly, underhand manner, therefore, are never going to work. By purposefully taking Shingo to his mother's small apartment as a typhoon approaches , he hopes to lure Kyoko to spend the night as a family with his deceit, unable to grasp that it is acts such as this that pushed her away in the first place. He is a man above his station, and in pursuing his second novel, that everyone can see will never happen, turns down lucrative offers to write more mainstream manga, as he believes it compromises his artistic integrity which died long ago.

His profession now to watch others, Ryota has become completely unaware of himself and the impact of his actions on those around him. Playing the victim, he is never the bad guy. Comparisons are often made to his father, harking to Kore-eda's previous title 'Like Father, Like Son'. Kyoko can see the future she would be offered with Ryota, in the form of her former mother-in-law's cramped apartment where she is forced to spend the night: As an elderly woman, left alone and near penniless by her husband's rash actions. Whereas Ryota can only see the past.

Eventually realising that he is only deceiving himself (urgh, I just wrote that!), as the storm passes and the fresh morning awakes, he starts to come to terms with this. This may all seem quite obvious and light, wondering if Kore-eda has lost a bit of spark, getting too comfortable in his work. And indeed, you may wish for a more dark perspective as in his earlier days. But the realism holds, and the wit of the script raises a smile. The cast perform their roles in a way that is believable, avoiding soap opera clichés and social stereotypes; and the stark soundtrack steers it away from melodrama.

Yes, this is more of the same, but in the same way that Ozu remade his own 'Late Spring' with 'An Autumn Afternoon'. The formula is working, and with enough bite to keep it away from the daytime TV nicety, ensuring that the familial isn't too familiar just yet.