“Broker” Theatrical Poster
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Bae Doona, Lee Ji-eun, Lee Joo-young, Park Ji-yong, Im Seung-soo, Kang Gil-woo, Lee Moo-saeng, Ryu Kyung-soo
Running Time: 129 min.
By Paul Bramhall
There are those filmmakers out there whose cinematic identity feels distinctly attached to the country that they hail from. Akira Kurosawa will always be associated with Japanese cinema much the same way Jean Luc-Godard will always be associated with French cinema. So it’s always interesting when we see such filmmakers venture further afield. In the Asian film industry, such ventures tend to inevitably involve an excursion into Hollywood, whether it be Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights from 2007, or Park Chan-wook’s Stoker from 2013.
What makes Broker unique in this world of cross-cultural pollination, is that it sees a Japanese director at the helm of a Korean production. While there have been examples of Japanese and Korean collaboration before in recent years, 2016’s Colonel Panics springs to mind directed by Cho Jin-seok with an all-Japanese cast, it remains a rare occurrence. Here it’s Hirokazu Kore-eda (The Third Murder, Still Walking) in the director’s chair, an auteur already firmly established as a master of meditative family themed dramas in his homeland, and still hot off walking away with the Palm D’Or prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters. Interestingly Broker isn’t the first time for Kore-eda to venture outside of Japanese language cinema following Shoplifters, with 2019’s Paris-shot The Truth headlined by Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, and Ethan Hawke.
While that production felt like a decidedly slight take compared to Kore-eda’s multi-layered character studies that audiences are used to, Broker sees him back in more familiar territory, dealing with the meaning of family. He’s also brought along a powerhouse Korean cast to populate his tale, with Song Kang-ho (The Drug King, Memories of Murder) reunited with Gang Dong-won (Peninsula, Master) 12 years after 2010’s Secret Reunion. This time rather than awkwardly thrown together South and North Korean agents, Kang-ho is playing a down on his luck laundry shop owner, and Dong-won a part-time worker at a church orphanage. The church features a relatively new concept on Korean shores – a baby drop box for mothers to drop off their unwanted babies.
A law means that any baby that’s left with a note from the mother saying they’ll return can’t be put up for adoption, however since only 1 in 40 who leave a note actually do return, the pair run a side hustle acting as brokers to sell the babies to couples who, for various reasons, can’t go down the formal adoption route. While fundamentally they do what they do for the right reasons, the practice is still highly illegal. Their scheme has a spanner thrown in the works when the mother of the latest baby, played by Lee Ji-eun (more popularly known as K-pop star IU), actually does return the next day. Thankfully the baby has yet to be sold, however her suspicions are raised as to why the Kang-ho and Dong-won are looking after him themselves, rather than being in the orphanage with the other babies. Sussed out, upon revealing the kind of money they get from a sale, the unlikely quartet set out on the road together to find a buyer.
The best cross-cultural collaborations will always be those in which both sides influence the other, and Broker could well be argued to be one of the best examples of this. While I was initially hesitant about how Kore-eda’s distinct style of Japanese stillness would carry over into a Korean production, as a director he’s embraced the aesthetic tone of Korean cinema and put his own distinctive stamp on it. The fact that Kang-ho and his ragtag gang are being followed by a pair of cops, played by Bae Doona (the only one in the cast to have worked with Kore-eda before, on 2009’s Air Doll) and Lee Joo-young (Baseball Girl, The Negotiation), gives the narrative a vaguely thriller like feel. In perhaps the most unexpected departure for a Kore-eda movie, we even get a pair of Korean gangsters, thanks to Kang-ho being heavily in debt (and other elements which would be a spoiler to go into).
At the heart of Broker though is still an exploration of Kore-eda’s most frequently visited theme of family. The narrative morphs into a loose road trip movie, with Kang-ho’s battered old laundry van driving around Korea to meet prospective buyers, and the pair of cops following them at a leisurely pace behind, just waiting to catch them in the act of exchanging money so they can move in for the arrest. It’s while on the road that Kore-eda’s trademark skill as a filmmaker comes to the fore, as the layers that make up each character are gradually revealed through moments of inconsequential dialogue and exchanges. Each has their own backstory that’s led to their present-day motivations, and even when those motivations turn out to be in conflict with each other, the confined environment and shared goal begins to organically bring them closer together, forming a kind of unrelated dysfunctional family unit.
Kang-ho is the master of bringing an understated hint of comedy to many of his roles, and the best directors know how to lean into it while avoiding turning him into a stereotype. In recent years we’ve seen the likes of Bong Joon-ho with Parasite and Jang Hoon in A Taxi Driver exploit this to their movies benefit, and similarly here Kore-eda extracts a standout performance, so much so that Kang-ho walked away with the Best Actor award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Indeed despite the seemingly heavy subject matter, there’s a lightness of touch on display through much of the runtime, and a welcome sense of humor that frequently bubbles to the surface.
The meetings with the prospective buyers are a highlight in the way they balance sensitivity and humor in just the right measure, from a couple who complain about the baby’s lack of eyebrows, to another who the cops illicit to act as potential buyers fumbling their lines about having a low sperm count. Perhaps it could be a personal preference towards Korean cinema over Japanese, but I’d daresay that out of the movies I’ve seen helmed by Kore-eda so far, I’d consider this his best. It could well be down to the way the plot is structured in such a way that it has a narrative thrust lacking from much of his Japanese output, the pacing of which keeps the momentum moving forward without sacrificing any of the intricate characterisation that his most acclaimed works are known for.
While on the surface the brokers of the story are Song-ho and Dong-won, the real stroke of genius about the title Broker is watching the character dynamics change in such a way that sees the role shift to others, even if it’s only a state of mind rather than an occupation. Everyone here is missing something from their lives, and while at its most literal it may be a child, in other ways it’s something more, and Kore-eda uses Broker’s structure to explore that sense of longing. The talent that he has is that it never feels overbearing, instead slowly pulling the audience into the characters world, and letting the themes play out in a naturalistic way.
Broker builds to an understated scene in a hotel room which is both quietly heart breaking while also life affirming at the same time, a masterful payoff that could have been clumsy and saccharine in the hands of anyone else, but here is executed to perfection. At face value Kore-eda’s latest deals with issues of adoption and the challenges faced within the process, however the bigger picture is one of human belonging, and the urge we all feel at some point in our lives to belong and connect with others. The decision to tell his story through the lens of Korean cinema proves to be an unlikely match that hits all of the right notes, and the final scene will likely have many thinking for a long time after the credits finish rolling. I know I still am.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 9/10
