ShopliftersShoplifters

They look like a real family but they’re a bunch of completely unrelated people living together. Hatsue is an elderly woman living off the compensation from her late husband and a small pension. Nobuyo was kicked out from his workplace under the ‘work share’ policy. Osamu is a day laborer. And Aki works in an adult establishment. In their words, Shota was a boy abandoned in a car who they took in and the same goes for Yuri, who was abused by her parents. They sneak into a plot of land in the middle of the city and start a temporary life as something that resembles a family. Just like the original title ”Petty Thief Family,” they steal things or take discarded objects and reuse them.

KORE-EDA Hirokazu is interested in the underlying tensions that exist in peaceful families. Shoplifters is a cynical take on the meaning of becoming a family. These members who gather together and have to prove their worth in the family cannot escape the world’s rules and order outside of the family. Perhaps the law and order of this world have created this formless and defenseless family of petty thieves. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, this is the late KIKI Kirin’s final film with KORE-EDA Hirokazu. (JEONG Ji-hye)​