A Japanese film, Shoplifters (2018) is about a poor family who takes to stealing items from supermarkets and has won many accolades including Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2018. I watched at a special screening as part of the Inauguration of the 16th Chennai International Film Festival. A wonderful film it was, don’t miss it.
The family of a grandma, a young boy, a working girl and a middle-aged couple residing in a shabby house in Tokyo find it difficult to make the ends meet. Into this mix, comes a little girl who gets tortured at her own house, she finds a real home here. Over a period of nearly a year, many things happen which threaten to break them apart and that’s the plot.
This is a film that shows how the ‘poor’ live, the importance of living together, the unconditional love they share, the simple pleasures of life and also the dark sides of people around us.
The young boy with the help of his ‘dad’ steals items deftly, it was a feast to watch him. You take to the little girl soon after she appears, a darling she was. Equally impressive was the performance of Grandma. The simplicity of the dialogues and the screenplay is what makes the film noteworthy!
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