Before we even get into the film review, we can agree on one thing – Song Kang-ho can play anything, from demanding film roles to a house plant standing in a corner, waiting to be watered. This still doesn't quite explain the main Cannes jury's decision to award him Best Actor award in this year's admittedly not so strong main competition, that nevertheless had far more better male roles to consider for this prestigious prize. Let's just briefly mention Park Chan-Wooks's breath-taking drama “Decision to Leave”, probably one of the most quotable films of the competition which stars Park Hae-Li, an actor so integrated in his role of a detective who strays into a fatal relationship that costs him everything he holds dear in life, that you wished to dive into the screen to offer him comfort. This would have been the unpolitical Palme D'Or award, the one that goes into the hands of the best, and not the best known actor.
“Broker” is screening at Inland Dimensions
Hirokazu Koreeda's drama “Broker” is by no means one of his best films. It is not even in his top five achievements. And frankly speaking, the role of the broker is also not in the top five of Song Kang-ho's performances. He is standardly good, but there is nothing outstanding about the role he's playing, and he won't be remembered for it but rather for anything else he's done before, most notably his performance in Bong Joon- ho's Oscar- and Palme d'Or winner “Parasite” (2019).
In Koreeda's story about two friends who are selling babies left in the baby box in Busan's Family Church, one wishes that the Japanese director would at least for once drop the subject of the family to construct and deconstruct it. Even better, he could have at least put aside his wish to make the brokers and their accidentally built patchwork family likeable, because for all what they are and do, despite of a (let's call it) ‘twist' towards the movie's end, they are profiting from the misery of those less fortunate.
By setting up his story in South Korea, Koreeda is stepping into for him – geographically and culturally close, but not habitual territory. The country's partially catholic, and differently rooted in the patriarchal system. Guilt and regret are the main denominators of all the main protagonists, jar-opening the doors concerning questions surrounding pregnancy, motherhood and whatever comes after the physical birth of a child in case that a woman is not ready for motherhood. So-Young (Lee Ji-eun) is such a case, and we see her in the opening scene of the film (as much as the bucketing rain permits) depositing her infant boy Woo-sung in front of the baby box under the observant eyes of two policewomen – Su-jin (Doona Bae) and Lee (Lee Joo-young), whose task is to bring children trafficking to a halt.
So-Young neither knows that she's been watched, nor that leaving the baby outside the church instead of putting it in the dry, safe place made for such desperate acts is obviously wrong, so she just walks away, leaving a piece of paper with the message ‘I will come to get you back' behind.
Koreeda thinks he knows where that path leads, but does he? All relationships built to justify his idea for the script are, if not loosely, than incredulously tied. The mother comes back, but she gets more interested in the kid's buyers than to actually get him back, and although a reason for this seemingly heartless decision does sound plausible, it is one of many elements of the story we simply do not buy. This isn't just due to the romanticized representation of characters whose actions speak against it. It's the inconsistencies that stand in the way of the film's accomplishment, especially in the case of the female lead who, on the one hand, becomes truly attached to her kid's brokers, on the other, she doesn't hesitate to give them up to the police to get her easy way out from a potentially long prison sentence.
Even more incredulous is the very ending, topped with cheese and we-are-all-friends-for-life outcome.
