Broker
Song Kang-ho won the best actor award at Cannes for this South Korean drama about baby trafficking.
For over twenty-five years Koreeda Hirokazu has been a leading light in Japanese cinema during which time he has given us some splendid films including After Life (1998), Still Walking (2008) and Our Little Sister (2015). He regularly writes his own screenplays and by now has given us some fifteen feature films. It is certainly a commendable achievement, but even so I find that not infrequently the stories that he gives us fall below the standard that his work seemed to promise when his skills in portraying Japanese family life marked him out as the heir to Ozu (a comparison which it seems has now come to irk him). Any filmmaker is entitled to misjudgments from time to time, but in Koreeda’s case certain weaknesses have become more apparent over the years and most of them are to the fore in Broker. Some critics felt that his decision to film in France in 2019 where he made The Truth was an unhappy one, but this latest film set in South Korea is to my mind even weaker. Despite my huge admiration for his best work, I have often found myself having certain doubts about films of his that have been hailed by many as masterpieces, but in the case of Broker I have the impression that there is a somewhat wider division of opinion than before.
The change of setting in Broker is not a problem - indeed, it means that this well-acted film can have as its leading actor Song Kang-ho who made such an impact in the 2019 film Parasite. Here he plays Sang-hyeon who runs a launderette in Busan but whose main activity, together with his younger partner Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won), lies in selling off for profit young children who have been abandoned. Two female cops (Doona Bae and Lee Joo-young) are on their track – indeed, these two seem to have no other assignment of any kind. But, as the police attempt to close in, the central focus of the film is on the two crooks and their involvement with one particular child, Woo-sung (Park Ji-yong) and the child's mother So-young (Lee Ji-eun). The latter had left her child outside a church in a baby box set up as somewhere to deposit unwanted babies. However, she then turns up not to demand the child back but to join with the crooks and demand a share of the large sum that they expect to obtain on finding parents desperate to adopt. Their shared endeavour finds them functioning together along with a seven-year-old boy (Im Seung-soo) who joins them after running away from an orphanage.
As the plot develops it becomes increasingly clear that Broker is expressing a theme that has come to the fore already in Koreeda’s more recent work, namely the notion that a true sense of family can often be found at its finest in people who, while lacking any connection by blood, share sympathies that create true bonds. That is quite workable as a central notion, but in this instance it is undermined by its context. With good photography by Hong Kyung-pyo, Broker captures its background settings (Incheon City as well as Busan) with an admirable sense of conviction, but neither that nor the talent of the cast can hide the fact that the tale told feels totally improbable. Furthermore, the issues that arise are not limited to the matter of implausibility, crucial through that is. In addition, Broker feels significantly overlong at 129 minutes, presents So-young’s abandoned child in a manner that emphasises how cute he is (how Ozu would have hated that!) and then indulges sentimentality more and more as the narrative unfolds. Consequently, despite the good elements in it, Broker becomes increasingly contrived and unreal. Working in South Korea does not mean that Koreeda has become lost in translation but rather that he fails for the reasons mentioned and because he offers a tale that at times becomes over-complex and which, as it heads for a happy ending, is far too lenient on its characters in the light of their actions. The big scene that we eventually reach is one in which everybody present is given the greeting "Thank you for being born”. Any viewers who are in tears at this point will totally disagree with my outlook on this film.
Original title: Beurokeo.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Doona Bae, Lee Ji-eun, Lee Joo-young, Kang Gil-woo, Im Seung-soo, Ryu Kyung-soo, Park Ji-yong.
Dir Koreeda Hirokazu, Pro Eugene Lee, Screenplay Koreeda Hirokazu, Ph Hong Kyung-pyo, Pro Des Lee Mok-won, Ed Koreeda Hirokazu, Music Jung Jae-il, Costumes Choi Se-yeon.
Zip Cinema-Picturehouse Entertainment.
129 mins. South Korea. 2022. UK Rel: 24 February 2023. Cert. 12A.
