Deborah Ross

Stealing beauty | 22 November 2018

It has no set pieces or major plot twists but Hirokazu Koreeda’s Palme D’Or winner is wholly absorbing and it will steal your heart

issue 24 November 2018

The major releases this week are Robin Hood, as a big Hollywood retelling, and The Girl in the Spider’s Web, a reboot of the Stieg Larsson thriller franchise starring Claire Foy. But the film you want to see, even if you may not know it yet, is Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters. This is a film with no set pieces or major plot twists but it is wholly absorbing and it will steal your heart. (Among other things. There is a lot of stealing.)

It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and is the latest from the Japanese filmmaker who mostly turns his camera on to families (After the Storm, Our Little Sister, Nobody Knows, Like Father, Like Son). However, his family dramas are distinct from most family dramas as they do not suffer from a surfeit of drama. Or sentimentality. Instead, they are always empathetic, tender explorations of human feeling and bonds.

The film opens with a man and young boy in a Tokyo supermarket.

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