Shoplifters - Review

Shoplifters

“Shoplifters” starts in Tokyo where a group of people lived together on the poverty margins. Osamu is a day laborer who is forced to leave his job after twisting his ankle; his wife Nobuyo, who works for an industrial laundry service; Aki, who works at a hostess club; Shota, is a young boy; and Hatsue, an elderly woman who owns the home and supports the group with her deceased husband's pension.

Osamu and Shota routinely shoplift goods, using a system of hand signals to communicate. Osamu tells Shota it is fine to steal things that have not been sold, as they do not belong to anyone. One especially cold night, they see Yuri, a neighborhood girl they regularly observe locked out on an apartment balcony. They bring her to their home, intending to only have her stay for dinner, but choose not to return her after finding evidence of abuse.

Yuri bonds with her new family and is taught to shoplift by Osamu and Shota. Osamu urges Shota to see him as his father and Yuri as his sister, but Shota is reluctant to do so. The family learns on television that police are investigating Yuri's disappearance; the family cuts her hair, burns her old clothes, and gives her a new name Lin.

REVIEW:  The film is slow but beautiful in look and character; filed with an abundance of deep charm, reverence and love. It moves with a sense of quiet light hearted confidence to showcase these people exactly for who they are. They are professional “Shoplifters”, grifters and cons who really don’t mean anyone any real harm. They are neither vile nor ruthless criminals. Rather they are just a loving family doing what they must just to keep a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs and a constant smile on their faces. They are a hopeful people who do hopeless things but never allow their actions to make them feel hopeless in life. They persevere, they survive, they are happy.

The core plot and subplot of this film are intertwined through a single meditative ethical quandary. What constitutes a loving family? When they take young Yuri in to their home you the viewer must reconcile as they did that she is in far better off being with these petty shoplifting vagabonds of society to being comfortable in a home without any material need but is still abused.

“Shoplifters is a slow melodramatic executed film. But when the layers are slowly peeled back the film bathes over you as something natural and emotionally touching with genuine family warmth.

3.00 Stars