Hirokazu Kore-eda, the Japanese master of patchwork family ties, won the Palme d’Or and then an Oscar with “Shoplifters” in 2018: It was a loving look at a family in precarious circumstances, which scrounges and cheats – not always quite legally .
After this international triumph, “Broker” is now coming to the cinemas. The subtitle “Family wanted” reveals that the question is again what “family” actually means: really only blood ties? Or is it not a human sense of belonging?
Filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda draws inspiration from newspaper articles
The fact that there is no sentimentality on this topic is due to the plot – and, as is often the case with Hirokazu Kore-Eda, it comes from a newspaper article, i.e. from a true story. In the film, it begins like this: A prostitute has killed her nasty client, who had also made her pregnant. On a rainy night, the young mother (Lee Ji-eun) leaves her newborn in a baby hatch. But a crook (Song Kang-ho) and his buddy prepared it so that no alarm was triggered. They take the baby to sell on the adoption market.
“Broker”: Morally confusing and amusing
Already in this clear introductory sequence, an emotional whirlpool is triggered in the viewer because many moral questions invade him. And then the highlight happens: The young woman regrets the step, returns, wants to take the baby back as soon as possible. But it’s gone. And the orphanage is still putting the police on this story. But that’s not all: the young mother will meet the child abductors, joining them in their search for the best possible new parents – because the child “brokers” are actually nice guys who are struggling to survive economically, so the film is pleasantly morally confusing and you follow the humane, tragi-comic thriller with amusement, irritation and excitement.
In the course of the odyssey-like search for new parents through South Korea, the crook-mother-child group is welded closer together. All of this is told with nonchalance and great art, resulting in two intelligently entertaining hours of cinema.
R: Kore-eda (Japan, 125 Min.); K: Arena, City Workshop (OmU) Leopold, New Maxim (OmU), Theatiner (OmU)
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