What makes a family? This is the question on Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s mind lately. As with his 2018 Palme D’or-winning film Shoplifters, Broker attempts to answer that question by examining a most unlikely found family: a group of people brought together via human trafficking.
That might sound sensational, but the film concentrates its characters around a so-called “baby box,” a place where mothers can leave infants that they either can’t or won’t care for. Ha Sang-hyeon (Song Kang-ho), a laundromat owner, and his friend Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won), who volunteers at the church where the baby box is, occasionally scoop up dropped-off babies and sell them on the black market for a tidy sum. This time things are complicated by the infant’s mother, Moon So-young (Lee Ji-eun), who returns after a day to reclaim her child and ends up going on a road trip with these men to interview potential parents for her child.
Full Review at Exclaim.ca: https://exclaim.ca/film/article/broker_review-directed_by_hirokazu_kore-eda
Broker Unboxes Found Families | Exclaim!
