Hirokazu Kore-eda gives makeshift families time to grow close without tidying away every doubt about them. We value his patience with actors, though his writing sometimes asks loneliness to excuse more than it should.
Fi1m perspective
In Broker (2022), the pleasure of travelling together keeps rubbing against the fact that the travellers are trying to sell a baby. Kore-eda gives their growing affection time, and lets uncertainty survive inside it. We value his interest in what makes these people want to stay together. He is a fine director of such hesitant company, though he sometimes works too hard to reassure us about their behaviour.
His television documentaries preceded his first fiction feature, Maborosi (1995). Nobody Knows (2004) and Still Walking (2008) brought wider notice to a filmmaker whose recurring subjects were family, loss and everyday life. Like Father, Like Son (2013) examined parents whose children had been switched at birth, while Shoplifters (2018) concerned a family formed outside blood ties. The Truth (2019), made in France, and the South Korean Broker took him beyond Japanese-language filmmaking.
The strongest reason to follow Broker is its ensemble, led by Song Kang-ho. IU's So-young gives the friendliness some necessary resistance, keeping her difficulty trusting these people present even when company becomes a comfort. We were moved by her because the wish to be understood never made that unease disappear. Kore-eda gets something valuable from leaving those feelings unresolved, but his screenplay sometimes treats the group's loneliness as sufficient reassurance about what they are doing.
He also edits Broker, and his patience is not always a virtue. The police subplot keeps interrupting the travellers without adding enough tension, while the journey gets more time than the story needs. Composer Jung Jae-il adds tenderness, but the music occasionally presses for sympathy that the actors have already earned. The humour helps: these people can be funny together, so the warmth need not depend entirely on explanations of how lonely they are.
For the more searching treatment of these makeshift families, we would start with Shoplifters. There is still a worthwhile evening in Broker, especially for anyone drawn to imperfect people finding comfort in one another. Allow for a director who sometimes keeps asking for sympathy after his actors have earned it. — Fi1m
Biography
Hirokazu Kore-eda is a Japanese film director, screenwriter, producer and editor. Born in Tokyo on 6 June 1962, he graduated from Waseda University in 1987 and began his career as an assistant director at the television production company TV Man Union, where he made documentaries before moving into feature films.
His work often centres on family relationships and everyday life. He is known for films including Nobody Knows (2004), Still Walking (2008), Like Father, Like Son (2013), Our Little Sister (2015), Shoplifters (2018) and Broker (2022), on which he also served as editor and writer. He won the Cannes Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d'Or in 2018 for Shoplifters. Later features include Monster (2023).
