BROKER

As with all good movies, even if the road towards the final act is a bit messy and unfocused at times, with a pitch-perfect final thirty minutes Broker easily becomes one of the finest films of the year.

Is there any director currently working better at dissecting family dynamics than Hirokazu Kore-Eda? After the surprising misfire of La Vérité the Japanese director bounces back to close to his best form in Broker, which takes a look at a band of Korean misfits who steal a boy from a baby hatch and then try to sell it to people who cannot adopt through legal channels.

The power of the picture doesn't necessarily lie in its overall narrative arc, which at times hews a bit too close to themes and storylines Kore-Eda explored before, but in the small, almost throwaway moments the director puts on the screen. A detective recalling music from a movie she saw with her husband, a kid trying to escape the orphanage for the umpteenth time, a mother looking along both enviously and with regret when another woman breastfeeds her child: these are just a few examples from the many instances Broker quietly breaks your heart.

And as with all good movies, even if the road towards the final act is a bit messy and unfocused at times, with a pitch-perfect final thirty minutes Broker easily becomes one of the finest films of the year.

release: 2022

director: Hirokazu Kore-Eda

starring: Song Kang-ho, Dong-won Gang, Bae Doona, Ji-eun Lee, Lee Joo-young