Oscars Prep - Watch Shoplifters by Hirokazu Koreeda

Hi ya Gorgeous,

It's  award season and all things come to a big finale tonight at the Academy Awards where an Oscar will go to many winners in many categories and Shoplifters is nominated for best foreign language film.

This film was written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda

who is also known for Nobody Knows, Still Walking, and After the Storm.

I had the opportunity to watch a screener at home, though the film is available in theaters and I would highly recommend seeing this on a big screen. The coloring is muted, though I think that speaks to the dull work life the family experiences and then in the next scene a bright pop of color as the family is enjoying a meal, a bath or a trip to the beach.

This film has some mature content and is rated R. Though this is a film about family it is not suitable for youth.

The thing I liked best about the film is that the family was patched together like strays creating a pack. Even though there is little blood relation between the characters they lived as a family and you could say that their familial bond was tighter than most blood ties
Each character in the Shoplifters has a full story arc and life in the film and  as the story progresses in it's almost 2 hour run  time, we watch the family members  make tough life choices and life the consequences of it.

This is a beautiful story and it's very well told.  If you enjoy a good drama with masterful storytelling that peels back layers of a character relating to their world, you will enjoy Shoplifters.

Please tune in tonight as Shoplifters is nominated for an Oscar - and it has already won the Palm D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival so there is a strong chance that Hirokazu Koreeda can take home the trophy!

Below is the official story synopsis from the IMDb website:

After shoplifting from a store, Osamu and his son run into a little homeless girl shivering with cold. At first glance, Osamu's wife is not quite keen to take her under her wing, but she eventually feels sorry for her. Despite eking a living from shoplifting, the family is happy until an unforeseen incident unveils a secret that puts their bond to the test.

Couple Osamu and Nobuyo, their adolescent "son" Shota, and Nobuyo's "sister" and "mother", Aki and Hatsue, live together in Hatsue's small and isolated house in Tokyo. Although Osamu and Nobuyo have legitimate blue collar jobs, and Aki works as an exotic dancer of sorts in a men's club, they largely exist on Hatsue's deceased husband's pension and through shoplifting whatever they may need, in addition to Nobuyo stealing from her employer. Osamu's outward belief is that if something is in a store and no one has yet bought it, it doesn't actually belong to anyone and thus shoplifting is not stealing from anyone. Osamu and Shota do the bulk of the shoplifting of their day-to-day goods, their shoplifting M.O. which they have perfected to pat routine. On their way home after a shoplifting run, they spot a five year old girl who they have routinely seen huddled outside what they assume is her house, she as usual looking scared and malnourished.

This day, they decide to take her home with them, in the process over time learning that she is Juri, an abused child. Ultimately, Osamu and Nobuyo decide to keep her, eventually changing her name to Lin and cutting her hair to make her look different after they discover two months after the fact that her abusive parents are finally looking for her. As Shota ends up being Lin's most frequent companion in he not attending school - Osamu and Nobuyo who have told him that only children who don't have the luxury of being taught at home need to go to school - he involves her in his routine shoplifting, the only life he knows. This new situation of Lin in their lives has the potential to bring this makeshift family come tumbling down around them as each person begins to question their past actions. If this figurative house does come crashing down, the alternative may not be better in the options of what is one's choice versus what is one's circumstance, the latter quite often biologically-based.





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