Original title: Beurokeo
2023/24 Season Membership: £70 / Guest Tickets – £12 (both available on the door)
South Korea • Comedy/Crime/Drama • Year: 2022 – Running time: 129 mins
Languages: Korean
Audience Response: 12 slips returned
- ‘Excellent’: 3 votes
- ‘Very Good’: 6 votes
- ‘Good’: 2 votes
- ‘Satisfactory’: 1 vote
- ‘Poor’: 0 votes
Read the comments here or visit our “Broker” discussion page
Synopsis:
A young lady decides to give up her newborn child to a church for adoption but discovers that there is an active group which steals these children for sale. She catches the group red handed and joins them in an exciting road trip to find customers ready to buy the child. Things dont go smoothly since two lady cops are hot on their trail, and things get complicated.
A companion piece (possibly) to our previous Kore-eda showing, Shoplifters (2018)
Screenwriters are always told to simplify and clarify: Hirokazu doesn’t hold with such rules. His films get stranger and more beautiful as they go.
Paul Bynes (Sydney Morning Herald)
Director/Writer: Hirokazu Kore-eda
After The Storm (2016) / Our Little Sister (2015) / Like Father, Like Son (2013)
Main Cast:
| Song Kang-ho | Ha Sang-hyun |
| Gang Dong-won | Dong-soo |
| Bae Doona | Su-jin |
| Lee Ji-eun | Moon So-young |
| Lee Joo-young | Detective Lee |
(for full cast list, additional technical information and reviews, please visit the Broker pages in IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes)
CFC Film Notes
Following 2020s The Truth, Koreeda once again leaves his native Japan, this time for South Korea, yet still takes his familiar themes, (dysfunctional) family and questionable loyalties, with him.
When Su-Jin decides to leave her baby at a (literal) drop-off centre for unwanted children, she sets in motion a chain of events that sees her thrust into the world of illegal adoption, questionable businessmen, dogged cops, and the murky world of selling of babies to rich Koreans.
Using the familiar trope of the ‘road movie’, Koreeda demonstrates his skills as an empathetic director, taking a fairly unsavoury topic and making us feel compassion towards the protagonists, no matter how murky and ambiguous their motives may seem. The film never loses its sense of humour and optimism, even though we question just how much of a fairytale ending the story can have.
Koreeda, one of the most successful Japanese filmmakers working in contemporary cinema, cements his reputation as an international director in his casting of South Korean superstars Song Kan Ho (Parasite), Bae Donna (Cloud Atlas), and rising star Hee-Jun Oh (star of Netflix sensation All Of Us Are Dead). The influential critic Roger Ebert describes Koreeda as the natural heir to Ozu. With output like Broker, it Is easy to see why.