Broker * * * *

Delivering Dry cleaning and Babies

I actually like it when a film leaves me in a moral quandary, and Broker is one that will certainly do that.

Hirokazu Koreeda is the same Japanese director who gave us Shoplifters.  In Broker he is more or less on the same theme - orphaned or abandoned children, and what really makes for a family.  Interestingly, although Hirokazu is Japanese this is set in Korea with Korean language.

I do not know if a "Baby Box" is true item, but in this film a church has one.  A mother in a desperate situation can  discreetly deposit her baby in the box. The church will then take the baby in to be raised at their orphanage.  Sometimes the mother will have a change of mind and come back, sometimes not. If she does, the church is accepting and will relinquish the child back to the mother. 

So-young did have a change of mind.  But when she returned to the church there was no record of the baby ever having been left there. She is invited to look through the orphanage, but there is no baby that looks like hers.

Her baby has actually been stolen from the box.  It is now at the cleaners - literally.  

Sang and Dong run a dry-cleaning business close to the church.  They also run a baby broker service for people who have been declined to adopt for one reason or another.  So they will slip up to the church soon after a baby has been deposited, open the box and grab the baby before the church does.

So-young, the relinquishing mother, finds out that they have her baby and visits Sang and Dong to retrieve him, but the baby is already on the market and the price is high. They also point out to So-young that she did abandon the baby so it's not hers now, however they do invite her to be part of the transaction. Again, an outrageous proposition but you go with it.  

Broker gets under your guard with a few simple truths:  Sang and Dong are men who are patient, attentive and untiring in their care for the baby.  So-young admits to being in a hopeless situation.  She did not abandon her baby out of callousness. In her life she is an outsider and she is being pursued for a serious crime.  It is inevitable she will be caught, and what then of her baby?  By working with Sang and Dong, she will be able to personally choose who the adopting parents are.  And here's another thing: Sang and Dong were orphans themselves as children so they know the system. 

Meanwhile, the police are on to Sang and Dong's baby-broker business but they need to catch them in the act of actually exchanging money.  Their plight is made more difficult by the fact that the natural mother is now with them.  The police, being two rather attractive female officers in  plain clothes, feature more and more as the film progresses and indeed become an integral (and unlikely) part of the resolution.  

Then there are the gangsters who are also after them (this is a busy film!), but I won't go  into them.

Sang and Dong regularly visit the orphanage where they were raised and have become "stars" with the children who are currently there. So much so that one of the children stows away in their van, thus an unlikely but happy and loving little family is formed. 

Travelling to find the right "buyer" for the baby the film becomes a road trip with plenty of twists along the way - especially when we learn of the other crime So-young committed and why she did it, along with what she does for a living. 

Like Shoplifters, where a family would take in orphans and teach them to steal whilst giving them a loving family, the arguments in Broker are untenable.  But the damn thing will get under your skin. It will also give you a lot of laughs.  There are some very funny scenes in Broker.