Broker (2022)
A desperate young woman leaving her newborn son in a public baby box, only for the baby to be kidnapped by baby traffickers seeking to steal the baby on the black market, doesn’t exactly sound like a premise for an uplifting movie. Yet again Kore-eda manages to take a script that in most other hands would have been bleak and depressing, and turn it into a film filled with hope and compassion. As the film doesn’t pass moral judgement onto its characters, a common trait for Kore-eda as I see it, we generally understand where they are coming from and why they are doing what they are doing. Flaws, mistakes, misjudgement and all. No one here has bad intentions, there is still conflict, but it gets resolved peacefully through increased mutual understanding. While it does have all those qualities and is definitely a film worth watching, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of especially Shoplifters for me, but Kore-eda is really a unique voice in the film landscape.
Rating: 3.5