Broker Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Kore-eda Hirokazu
Stars: Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-woo, Lee Ji-eun, Im Seung-soo, Bae Doo-Na, Lee-Joo Young.
The latest film from revered Japanese filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu (Shoplifters, etc) is set in South Korea and tackles that country’s adoption policies.
Sang-hyeon (Song Kang-ho, from Parasite, etc) runs a small launderette in Busan along with his co-worker Dong-soo (Gang Dong-woo). Sang is deeply in debt. Both men also work as volunteers at a local church that operates a baby box, a facility where mothers can anonymously drop off unwanted babies for the church to look after and foster out to willing families. Dong-soo himself is a former orphan. The pair have hatched a scheme in which they remove a baby from the baby box, erase the security camera footage and look after the baby until they can arrange for a family who are willing to pay a hefty fee to have one delivered. The pair traffic in delivering unwanted babies to families who are unable to have children or adopt due to Korea’s law.
One rainy night a young mother So-young (played by pop star Lee Ji-eun) drops off her baby but leaves it outside the baby box. Sang-hyeon and Dong-soo take the baby home and begin the hunt for a family to adopt it. But a complication arises in the person of So-young who had been lingering around the church in the rain. So-young realises that she is not yet ready to be a mother but has had second thoughts about giving away the baby. She does want the baby to be given to the right family who will care for her, and she demands to be part of their enterprise so she can reassure herself that the potential parents are suitable. She accompanies the pair on their journey, especially after they agree to cut her in on a share of the proceeds.
The three adults are also accompanied on their journey by Hae-jin (Im Seung-soo), a high-spirited youngster from the same orphanage where Dong-soo was raised, and he brings plenty of energy and mischievous humour to the material. During their journey the four become quite close, almost like a family drawn together by their common purpose.
But they are unaware that Sang-hyeon and Dong-soo are being followed by a pair of detectives in Soo-jin (Bae Doo-Na) and Lee (Lee-Joo Young) who have been investigating the men’s activities and want to catch the brokers in action when the money changes hands. The detectives eventually persuade So-young to spy on the two men to help in their eventual prosecution.
Hirokazu’s films often follow characters or outsiders on the fringes of society (as with his Cannes award winning 2018 drama Shoplifters), but they also focus on family values and themes of family, the law, friendship and the importance of connections. Broker taps into the usual themes that are common to his humanist oeuvre. Broker is a slow-moving and thought-provoking drama that also taps into the tropes of the road movie genre as a backdrop to the action.
Hirokazu’s direction is unhurried, allowing audiences time to get to know the flawed characters and their motivations. Hirokazu explores their internal struggles and conflicted emotional journey, but he is non-judgmental in his approach to the characters, letting audiences form their own opinions of them and their actions. He has a low-key observational approach to the material, and handles the film’s complex issues with empathy, compassion and generous doses of humour.
The performances are all solid, with Kang-ho, one of Korea’s foremost actors, particularly strong. He won a Best Actor prize at Cannes for his subtle work here.
The film has been nicely shot by Bong Joon-ho’s regular cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo (Parasite, Snowpiercer, etc).
★★★
