Tag: Hirokazu Kore-eda

Shoplifters (Manbiki Kazoku)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

The nuclear family. Dad Osamu (Lily Franky) takes son Shota (Jyo Kairi) to a local convenience store where, through a series of long rehearsed routines, they steal a series of items. Just another day of getting by.

Mum Nobuyo (Ando Sakura), a former sex worker, dispenses advice to her younger sister Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) – who gets fired from a club where girls display themselves in various states of dress and undress to clients through one way mirrors. Basically, she’s been caught sticking her hands in the till. Grandma (Kirin Kiki) lives with the family making a total of five persons in one small living space.

Dad explains to Shota that he and his partner are bonded here (puts hand on heart) not here (puts hand on genitalia). Yet one afternoon when everyone else is out, she comes on strong and the two adults indulge in an afternoon of passion. Until the children come home unexpectedly.

As if all these familial relationships weren’t complicated enough, father and son spot a little girl (Miyu Sasaki) sitting on the street. She’s hungry, so they take her to their home and give her a meal. That turns into an overnight stay. They try and take her back to her own home, but it’s clear in the street outside from her parents’ clearly audible and highly vocal arguing that neither father nor mother wants the child currently nor ever did. So the family decides to take Yuri in as its newest member.

Shota takes Yuri on a shoplifting trip but it doesn’t go so well. She’s both naive and inexperienced. A shop assistant tells him to quit involving his sister in his shoplifting activities. Much later on, the boy takes the girl on another shoplifting spree which ends in him getting caught, the police questioning the entire family and unexpected revelations about the family itself.

Koreeda has ventured into this territory of the non-nuclear family before. Nobody Knows (2004) featured a group of children left to fend for themselves in an urban environment. Like Father, Like Son (2013) had each of two couples mistakenly bring up a boy as their own after two boys were switched at birth in the hospital. The Japanese director seems fascinated by family function and dysfunction. Why the family unit matters – and when it might be redundant.

All of which is constantly engaging and its assorted characters compelling. One is drawn to them and yet, at the same time, it’s not a family you’d want to be part of when its reality is eventually exposed. The film picked up the Palme d’Or in Cannes and numerous other awards elsewhere. Koreeda seems to be on a winning streak at the moment after The Third Murder (2017). For good measure, Shoplifters also boasts a terrific score by Haruomi Hosono, his first for Koreeda.

Shoplifters plays in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) on Sunday, November 4th . Buy tickets here. It’s out in cinemas Friday, November 23rd, and on VoD on Monday, March 25th (2019).

The Third Murder

Posted on by Alasdair Bayman

F ollowing his captivating examination of the family in After the Storm (2016), Hirokazu Koreeda continues his prolific form of one-film-a-year and delivers a multi-layered emotional tapestry in The Third Murder. Pre-dating the appearance of the title on screen, Misumi (Kôji Yakusho) commits the titular cardinal sin, whilst stealing the dead man’s wallet. Charged on the account of murder and robbery, his fate looks sealed until the prudent lawyer Shigemori (Masaharu Fukuyama) seeks to add truth to the matter. Retaining the familial themes that have imbued his works with a vibrant quality, whilst venturing to pastures green, Koreeda entrances you into the seams of his narrative; leaving one emotionally charged and contained.

Throughout, the murder which Misumi has committed only has one valid piece of evidence; his confession. Apart from the fact he worked at a canning factory owned by the man he killed, there is actually very little hard evidence to support Misumi committing murder. Shigemori is all too aware of this and proceeds to look beyond Misumi’s confession and study the actual narrative of the killing. Previous to Shigemori’s involvement, his father examined the case but was all too swift to jump towards the conclusion that the murder was all down to Misumi.

Working in a small team of four, Shigemori’s work relationship is imbued with a tender stroke by Koreeda. Replicating the narrative bonding act of eating noodles, which is so fundamental to the relationships in After the Storm, ingrains a delicate characteristic to the lead. Acting as a cathartic escape from the stresses of the murder case, such senses add levity towards the Noirish elements of Misumi’s brutal act of murder. The fine balance between light and dark tones is an artistic stroke of virtuosity from the director, resulting in a deep emotion investment to all the characters, regardless if they are criminals or not.

Similar to Our Little Sister (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2015) an exploration of young femininity is unearthed in Sakie (Suzu Hirose). The daughter of the man Misumi killed-or seemingly so- she is a vulnerable tender being. Operating to a level of secrecy towards Shigemori, the secrets of her father are uncovered through her. Hirose’s graceful pale faces furthers the progress of her character’s tenderness too.

Matching Misumi and Shigemori, Mikiya Takimoto’s CinemaScope camera fills their claustrophobic encounters in the holding cell with peculiar angles, occasionally merging the two men’s faces together or intimately. Recalling the aesthetics of Robby Müller’s cinematography in Wim Wender’s essential Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984), it is absorbing to witness.

Adding to an already impressive and varied filmography, Koreeda serves up a delightful slice of enthralling cinema. Akin to the varying genres explored by Francois Ozon from 8 Women (2002) to Frantz (2016) knows what field the Japanese director will operate in next. This interchangeable form of filmmaking is as good as it gets.

The Third Murder was out in UK cinemas in March. It’s out on VoD on Monday, July 16th. The director won the Palme d’Or in Cannes for his latest film Shoplifters, yet to be released in the UK and elsewhere.

ManHunt (Zhui bu)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

The late Japanese actor Ken Takakura who died in 2014 appeared in more than 200 films and made his name playing ex-cons and gangsters for Toei studios between the mid-fifties and mid-seventies. He was a major inspiration for Hong Kong director John Woo who here remakes the 1976 Takakura vehicle Manhunt.

Du Qiu (Chinese actor Zhang Hanyu) finds himself in a Japanese bar swapping notes on movies with the mama-san Rain (Korea’s Ha Ji-won). Almost immediately, a loutish group of men in suits storm into the same bar to demand he leaves so she can give them her full attention. Once he’s gone, Rain and her partner Dawn (the director’s daughter Angeles Woo) proceed to gun down the suits, the camera whirling around them as Woo choreographs the mayhem.

Du is a lawyer working for a pharma company. The morning after a huge corporate event he wakes up to find a dead woman (Tao Okamoto) lying next to him in his bed. Implicated in her murder, he goes on the run. A cop Yamura (Fukuyama Masaharu from Like Father, Like Son, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2013) is assigned to catch him. Eventually after a series of pursuits and confrontations, the fugitive convinces the cop of his innocence and the two men join forces to clear Du’s name. As well as the two female assassins, they must contend with the villainous corporate head Sakai Yoshihiro (Kunimura Jun) and his insecure son Sakai Hiroshi (Ikeuchi Hiroyuki) plus the vengeful widow (Qi Wei) of a deceased research scientist.

Woo builds one incredible action set piece upon another which he perfectly integrates into his visual storytelling and bravura cinematic style. Numerous eye-popping fights, car chases and shoot outs pepper the thrilling proceedings while a sniper sequence and speedboat chase recall similar scenes from his masterpiece The Killer (1989). The contemporary Japanese backdrop, players and crew give the whole thing a clean, high tech feel and it’s refreshing to see female as well as male characters participate equally in the action: a shift in mores since the more male-oriented days of A Better Tomorrow (1986) or Hard Boiled (1992) twenty-five years ago.

In the end though, action and character are the thing. Holding to the maxim that action is character, Woo defines his protagonists by the way they look at each other, handle a gun or leap through the air, refining his directorial delivery via every tool at his disposal in his cinematic arsenal. The acting required on a John Woo production might be a lot more full on and physical than that demanded by most other directors, but the cast here rise to the considerable challenge thrown at them and acquit themselves well. It’s been a long time since John Woo has made anything like this: the result is a most welcome return to form.

ManHunt was a late addition to the BFI London Film Festival. Hopefully some enterprising UK distributor will snap it up and get it out there on screens before long. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook, and we’ll keep you posted!