LogFAQs > #983172372

8. Shoplifters (2018)
Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
Score: 123

Johnbobb: 7
Suprak: 7
Mythiot: 8
Karo: 8
Inviso: 10
jcgamer: 10
Lightning: 13
Poke: 14
Seanchan: 21
Seginus: 25

Johnbobb
Why I included it:
Just to fuck with you guys. You all needed to be humbled.

ok but really, I debated a lot whether or not to include Shoplifters. It's not a crime film in the way that anything else on this list is a crime film, despite the fact that it is, from the perspective of the police, about kidnapping, grand larceny, prostitution, fraud, murder and illegal disposal of a corpse. This is such an altogether different take on a crime film, portraying its protagonists as deeply complex people who aren't always "good" but are always doing what they think is best for the people they care about in the moment. It's also possibly the saddest film I've ever seen and I really wanted the chance to talk about it and mutually mourn the experience. Oh also it won the Palme d'Or, if you care about that kind of thing.

What I thought:
After I watched Shoplifters for the first time, I told myself I couldn't ever watch it again. It was just too much. And here I am, watching it again, and here it is, too fucking much.

Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
So was everyone kidnapped? From what I could put together, the little girl was for sure not their child

Karo
Here in Japan we have the most wholesome crime family ever, who gets by by having the children shoplift stuff from stores.
The story is very subtle, and you don't realize how sinister the actions of this family seem until the very end even though it was right there all along. Like they literally kidnap a small child and bury their grandmother in the basement and you never think to challenge anything they do from a moral standpoint. Even after they face judgment you STILL side with them, that last scene of the girl looking over the balcony and pining over the family that took her, holy shit.
It's just very good and feels quite different than a lot of these movies.

Inviso
This is a rough movie to talk about. Obviously, its not at the very top of my list, but I still ranked it solidly high overall. Its definitely not a FUN movie thoughits very bleak and inherently upsetting by its subject matter. The movie opens with a dad and his son tag-teaming a grocery store to steal food for the nights dinner (hence the title), but shortly thereafter, they come across a little girl in the process of being abused by her awful parents, so they take her home to give a hot mealwhich turns into her being kidnapped/adopted. And all of this is played rather light-heartedly; the abusive parents are HIGHLIGHTED as being abusive, while the kidnappers are painted as poor, yet they showed more love and care for this girl than her biological family ever did.

I think thats what makes this film so interesting to watch: the main family consists of scammers, criminals and people otherwise trying to game the systembut they by and large come across as good people when it comes to caring for one another. Its not like you have a group of assholes who are also assholes to each other, is what I mean. And its only when that morality starts to break down (the dad breaking into cars to steal purses) that Shota loses faith in the system and starts the familys downfall. Even that though, he gets caught while trying to protect his adoptive sister from getting caught herself.

But yeah, the first ninety minutes are a lot of build-up and establishing the familial relationships (mother, father, older sister, grandma, Shota and newly-adopted Yuri/Juri/Lin). But that last half hour is ROUGH. Shota gets caught shoplifting, which brings the police to the house, where they discover what are essentially a family of squatters, who happen to have the little girl thats been missing for the better part of a year. Its revealed that Shota was ALSO shoplifted from a car when he was young, and the sister gets crushed to learn that her grandma was kinda using herbut also that her parents never really gave a shit that she was living with her grandma in the first place. All the lies unravel, and the end result is Shota being sent to an orphanage (where he thrives, admittedly, but still), and Juri returns to her shitty family. Its so bleak, yet its such a compelling story all the same. Really well-done, even if it doesnt rank incredibly high on this list.

jcgamer
What a great surprise this was. Knowing the premise, I thought I would dislike the central characters, but by the end I was very invested and even emotionally moved. A challenging and unique study on the meaning of family.

9/10

Lightning
Children need their mothers.
Thats just what mothers tell themselves.

A very different kind of crime film. This is a slow paced, really emotional look into a found family of, as the title implies, shoplifters in Japan. They rescue a very young girl from an abusive home and the rest of the film is just chronicling them living their lives stealing to get by until it all comes tragically (?) crashing down. Overall I thought this film, for a film that has very little story to it, lands its points and its themes really well. The long scenes of characters just doing their thing all tell you about what life is like for these people.

The cinematography here is terrific. Its not quite documentary style but feels truly real, like you are looking in on these peoples lives. The colours feel real and the framing of the shots is almost voyeuristic. The performances really standout as well, I dont speak Japanese but the emotion was clear, especially in the police station scenes later on. When the story gets to that point, even though you know these people arent doing things the right way its still devastating.

I have to admit, the ending of this film really got me. Just thinking he wasnt going to turn around at all was already sad, so when he does so and mouths dad its like a punch to the gut. Yet despite all the pain the film puts the characters through it remains hopeful, much like the characters themselves are finding joy in a dire situation.

4/5

Seanchan
This movie feels so out of place in this list, at least compared to the ones Ive watched so far. Its a surprisingly low key, non-violent movie about the family we make (rather than the family were born into). I kind of enjoyed it, and theres some surprisingly sweet moments. At the same time, its hard to rate it higher than the more exciting movies.

Seginus
This one is practically a food movie, or at least more of a family drama than it is disorganized crime. There is a parallel to Raising Arizona here with the benevolent kidnapping angle, to which this takes a more sober, realistic approach than the Coens screwball comedy. I like that it doesnt tell us whether we should like the characters or not, its basically up to the viewer. But I have to admit I struggled to retain interest for most of this one, mostly because its an uneventful and ponderous entry in a relatively action-packed list. I might have to revisit this one with a different frame of mind some day, but for now I sleep.