Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda is back with the brilliant Broker
Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda is back after almost four years, taking his talents to Korea for a drama with echoes of his Palm D’Or winning 2018 film Shoplifters.
Broker is based around a heart-breaking reality. In many countries, overwhelmed mothers bring new-born children to Baby Boxes – drop off points at churches that guarantee the infants will be taken care of. The film centres on two men, Sang-hyun (Parasite’s Song Kang-ho) and Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won), who intercept the drop offs and sell the babies on the illegal adoption market.
One mother, So-young (Ji-eun Lee), discovers the operation and demand that she travels with the men to make sure her child ends up with the right parents. Unbeknownst to the trio, the police have been monitoring the box and are on their tail.
Just as Shoplifters looks at the workings of an unconventional family group, this road trip comedy-drama turns the cast into a makeshift brood. Various misadventures test their resolve and bring them close together, picking up more members as the stops pile up in their laundry-strewn van. The imperfections in all of the characters draw you closer to them, with even the cops bringing their own endearing fragility to the process.
The story lacks the killer blow that made Kore-eda’s previous works unforgettable, but the cast are good enough to elevate the sentimental moments. Song Kang-ho perfectly exemplifies this world where noone is entirely good or bad, running an organisation that is essentially human trafficking but with a gentle care that makes you want him and his associates to succeed. Indeed, all the of the cast embody the film’s overarching themes of loneliness, and the weight that is felt by the absence of love.
Broker may not steal the show this Oscar season, but it a quietly sincere story that brings humanity to some uncomfortable subject matter. Kore-eda continues to be a filmmaker capable of making a regional story feel truly international through the humanity of his characters.