‘Broker’ Review: Three Criminals Attempting to Sell a Baby Become an Unlikely Family in Kore-eda’s Latest
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film CriticWhile Americans’ attention is consumed with the issue of abortion, halfway across the world, director Kore-eda Hirokazu (“Shoplifters”) focuses on the alternative for mothers who carry their pregnancies to term, but can’t raise the children on their own.
A warm and unexpectedly nonjudgmental look at the Korean gray market for adoption, “Broker” was inspired by the idea of “baby hatches” — essentially, a donation station for unwanted infants — and follows the director’s natural curiosity through to its most humanistic conclusion, as audiences unexpectedly come to empathize with practically everyone involved in the buying and selling of a little bundle of joy.What is Kore-eda, who is Japanese, doing making a film in South Korea, you might ask?
It’s not his first time working abroad. Fortunately, “Broker” is less of a stretch than the Oscar- and Palme d’Or-winning director’s previous feature — the starry but stilted meta-movie “The Truth,” which took place in Paris — returning Kore-eda to the familiar theme of families, bound by blood or necessity, and the inexhaustible moral territory he finds to explore there.
Plus, this project allowed him to work with “Parasite” cinematographer Hong Kyung Pyo and that film’s star, Song Kang Ho, whose good-natured persona makes it difficult to think too badly of the film’s eponymous human trafficker, Sang-hyun. “Broker” opens with an anonymous mother abandoning her child at a church-operated baby box.
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