Globally renowned for his patient, observational style and intimate attention to the lives of outsiders, Kore-eda Hirokazu has spent decades interrogating the nature of family bonds and their moral configurations, often examining the everyday lives of civilians in his native Japan while lingering on those who exist outside its status quo. His cinema is distinguished by its calm yet compassionate insight, looking past perceived social norms to illuminate the messier realities of family in a society that still conforms such relations to bloodline, age, gender, and class status — despite the inability of such traditional mores to measure the true health of a family unit.
Kore-eda’s latest film, “Broker,” is the first he’s made in South Korea, furthering the director’s travels abroad after his 2020 French melodrama “The Truth.” It’s also, in many ways, a quintessential Kore-eda story, focusing on an unlikely found family operating along society’s margins. “Family is a very complex thing that cannot be defined in one word,” the Japanese filmmaker has stated. “Even now, as I continue to make films, it is something I constantly question myself about.”
Expanding to U.S. theaters nationwide on January 13, “Broker” begins as a hesitant young mother, So-young (Lee Ji-eun, better known as singer-songwriter IU), leaves her baby in front of a church’s “baby box” facility, where parents can anonymously surrender children they’re unable or unwilling to care for. Soon after, debt-ridden laundrette owner Sang-hyun (“Parasite” star Song Kang-ho, who won the best actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance) joins forces with his friend Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won), a volunteer at the facility, to sell the baby on the illegal adoption market. But when So-young regretfully returns the next day, she discovers their plot and decides to assist the pair, hoping to bypass the bureaucratic processes that would likely place her child in an orphanage. Baby on board, the trio embarks on a road trip to track down suitable parents who’ll pay a premium, even as detectives Soo-jin (Bae Doona) and Lee (Lee Joo-young) give chase.
Morally ambiguous but disarmingly sincere in its study of these tender-hearted traffickers, who gradually form a tight-knit group along with stowaway orphan Hae-jin (Im Seung-soo), “Broker” is far from Kore-eda’s first exploration of child maltreatment and unconventional familial units. Based on a real incident in Japan, “Nobody Knows” (2004) told the story of a 12-year-old boy who struggles to care for his younger siblings after their mother vanishes. “Our Little Sister” (2015) centered on three adult siblings who take in their teenage half-sister after the death of their estranged father. “Shoplifters” (2018), meanwhile, examined a makeshift “family” of small-time thieves, picking up after they decide to steal a young neighborhood girl from her abusive friends.
Originally a documentarian and television director, Kore-eda made his narrative feature debut in 1995 with “Maborosi,” a meditative drama about a woman grieving the deaths of her grandmother and first husband, the latter by suicide. The film launched Kore-eda’s career while prefacing his career-arching interest in how familial structures can ascribe meaning to one’s life and the roles they can play in guiding an individual’s emotional process. “Maborosi” earned the Golden Ozella Prize at the Venice Film Festival, Kore-eda’s first international accolade of many; in 2013, he won the Cannes Jury Prize for “Like Father, Like Son” — about two Japanese families of differing socioeconomic means who discover their sons were accidentally switched at birth — and he returned to the festival in 2018 with “Shoplifters,” which won the Palme d’Or.
Increasingly prolific in recent years, Kore-eda shows no signs of slowing after “Broker.” His next feature, a Gaga-Toho co-production titled “Monster,” which is to be his first film made in Japan since “Shoplifters,” is already in post-production; the film will reunite Kore-eda with his “Shoplifters” star Sakura Ando. It’s expected to open in Japanese cinemas on June 23, which could find the filmmaker back at Cannes this May to premiere it. Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto recently became attached to score “Monster,” with Nagayama Eita, Takahata Misuki, Kakuta Akihiro, Nakamura Shido, and Tanaka Yuko co-starring opposite child actors Soya Kurokawa and Hinataare Hiiragi.
Kore-eda also has two projects at Netflix: one an unspecified feature, the other an imminently due adaptation of Aiko Koyama’s manga “Maiko-San Chi No Makanai-San,” titled “The Maknai: Cooking for the Maiko House.” Kore-eda served as showrunner for the nine-episode series, streaming on January 12; he also wrote and directed individual episodes alongside emerging directors Megumi Tsuno (“Ten Years Japan”), Hiroshi Okuyama (“Jesus”), and Takuma Sato (“Any Crybabies Around?”).
With “Broker” playing in New York and Los Angeles, expanding wide on January 13, Kore-eda spoke to The Playlist over Zoom, and through a translator about his continued dedication to telling small, sensitive stories about families lost, chosen, and found.
I’ve read that you developed the plots for “Shoplifters” and “Broker” at the same time and that both were inspired by discoveries you made while researching “Like Father, Like Son.” How did that story lead you toward these ones?
Well, I have to start from a place of reflection on “Like Father, Like Son.” When I made that film, I’d had a child, and I had experienced not immediately feeling like a father, whereas my wife seemed to take to motherhood immediately. I felt it was more like a hill to climb for a man to feel like a father. I spoke about this in an interview, and a lady told me off. She said that not all women are natural mothers, that this idea that motherhood is something innate within women is male prejudice, and that being exposed to that prejudice can be quite hurtful to women. And so I regretted having said that, and I started to ask: “What is motherhood? What gives rise to motherhood? Can one be a mother without having had a child, or is it something that only arises when you give birth?”
The Japanese title of “Like Father, Like Son” was “Then, One Becomes a Father.” If that was me thinking about fatherhood, I then started to think about motherhood with “Shoplifters,” where a woman who hasn’t had a child is trying to be a mother, and then “Broker,” where a woman abandons her child, but doing so is her way of protecting the child and being a mother to that child. And then, [in “Broker,”] you have the character of the female detective, who starts off critical of this mother but ends up taking the child in her arms and becoming a mother herself. That’s my thought process when I sit down and think about it, which isn’t something I do very regularly.
I understand that the system of “baby boxes” exists in both Japan and South Korea, though it’s more common in Korea. Working outside of Japan, what did you discover of commonalities and differences between the ways Japanese and Korean cultures conceive family and the responsibilities of the parent?
The adoption system in Korea, because of the influence of Christianity there, is much better-established than it is in Japan. In that sense, they’re more used to having a family where not everyone is necessarily connected by blood. On the other hand, it’s also a very conservative country. Especially if you go to the rural areas of Korea, there is still a very patriarchal society where blood ties are highly valued. That is very strong historically, and that was something that I felt that I had in common with Japan.
