Broker

Sentimentality is a dirty word when it comes to serious art about the human condition, a cheap trick to mask inefficient storytelling. But Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda eschews this consensus in Broker, his first Korean-language feature, a film whose nostalgic blush never cheapens the rich construction of its characters. But they are characters who, at a fleeting glance, often fall below the standard of civilised behaviour. Much like Koreeda’s 2018 movie, Shoplifters, judgement is bypassed in favour of a tenderness which coolly laps in gentle waves from the screen.

It is proof of Koreeda’s talent that the mercenary human traffickers at the centre of Broker contribute to this tone rather than spite it. Ha Sang-hyeon (Song Kang-ho) the owner of a laundromat, and his business partner Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won), run a black market operation stealing unwanted babies from the baby box of a local Busan Church, acting as brokers in the illegal sale of the children to prospective parents. When Moon So-young (Lee Ji-eun) takes the unprecedented step of returning for her child, however, she decides to participate in the process, accompanying the two men on a road trip to find and interview appropriate candidates. What follows is the formation of a strangely normal and loving familial unit. Despite the illegality of their adventure, it has the air of a family holiday, a ruse which they explicitly deploy when a police officer pulls them over to inform them of their open trunk.

Koreeda dips his toe into a noirish sensibility, albeit one in keeping with the personable tone, as the investigative work of two junior detectives looking to earn their stripes is relied upon as a moral makeweight as we begin to ask who the real brokers are, while a murder mystery broils in the far background. The director’s deftness means that these tangential threads are pulled in and out of focus at will, never interrupting the film’s tempo, a leisurely and even one, elevated by the depth and precision of Kang-ho’s masterful comic timing.

By all accounts, Koreeda had struggled with the film’s ending, subjecting it to multiple rewrites and modifications. If there is one gripe with Broker, it is that this struggle shows in the final cut. The momentum feels as though it leads to a dead end, with a concluding act that feels a little baggy and somehow unfocused. It is testament, however, to an understatedly daring piece of storytelling that it doesn’t go where many others would have, and searches for a solution to So-young’s search for closure which feels true, if not entirely on the mark.

Matthew McMillan

Broker is released in select cinemas on 24^th February 2023.

Watch the trailer for Broker here: