Atom User Reviews for Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku)
Finally I don’t have to print out the ticket or go to a machine at the theater
Slow start builds to surprising ending.
The film never really takes off, characters never truly get confronted with any form of major conflict, and I’m only left wondering how it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Metacritic
Kore-eda’s slow reveal of who these people are, and what they mean to each other, has its mystery story aspects, but this is essentially a character study, or at least it tries to be, and not a puzzle picture. He fills in each of the main players leisurely, in snatches.
For the bulk of Shoplifters, Kore-eda works in a beautiful register that feels both detailed and genuine at the same time. We get to know these characters so deeply, watching them all at their jobs.
Tolstoy got it wrong and Shoplifters gets it right. All happy families are not the same. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s enchanting, subversive masterpiece takes on family values and bourgeois pieties through a Japanese crime family that is not what it seems.