Two men who sell babies, an underage mother and her baby and a stowaway child make for a ragtag, dysfunctional family of sorts as they travel in a barely roadworthy laundromat van, evading gangsters (who want the baby) as well as two policewomen who want to catch them red-handed. Who could’ve imagined such a convoluted tale of relationships?!
Icing on this cake rich with possibilities: the film was directed by Japanese director Hirozaku Koreeda, whose filmography includes the multi-award winning film Shoplifters (2018) as well as the brilliant Like Father Like Son (2013) - both films compel you to question the established meaning of the word ‘family’.
In Shoplifters, a little boy shares a home with a whole lot of homeless shoplifters who survive by the skin of their teeth and adopts a little girl who is being mistreated by her own family. Like Father Like Son is the story of a man who discovers that his biological son was switched with someone else’s baby and now wonders how deep the bond between father and son is…
If Shoplifters used the weather and the beach to tug at our heartstrings, this film uses the rain to wash away the flaws of the characters in the film. Each time the sun shines, the narrative has moved towards hope, and when it rains, you can just feel the hurt and the wounds of each of the characters with every stinging drop.
A young girl suspected of having killed a married man who impregnated her and did not want their baby, leaves the child in a ‘baby box’ at the church. Two men - one who volunteers at the church and another who runs a laundromat - pick up the baby and are going to sell him to a couple who cannot go through the tiresome legal adoption process. It’s a crime in South Korea, and two female police detectives are on a stakeout, waiting to observe this attempted sale and catch both the buyer and the seller in the act. Their job is complicated by the young mother who wants a say in the sale: she cannot sell the baby to people who might treat her Woo-Sang badly if they have a child of their own later.
‘You abandoned the child! So you lost the right to dictate who buys the child!’
‘I left a note that I was going to come back for the baby!’
‘Only 1 out of 40 mothers who abandon their babies come back.’
‘I would have come back.’
‘Then why didn't you leave a phone number with the note?’
‘Why do you care, you kidnapped my baby and are going to sell it.’
Kidnap?! You abandoned the baby. We are just giving the baby a better life than the one at a child rescue shelter.’
‘You’re not saviours. You’re just brokers.’
Even if you closed your eyes and heard this exchange, you'd feel the weight of the raindrops on your back and your heart would be wrung. How would a young girl who is battling to survive in the world take care of a baby? Is she right in questioning the men? Child trafficking is illegal for a reason. Then why are we as an audience not horrified at what is unfolding on the screen in front of us?
The cast is stellar. The altogether familiar smile on the face of Song Kang-Ho is present in the film like the sun peeking through the shadows. He won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for this role. He plays Sang-Hyeon, a laundromat owner who is in debt to the local gangsters. With the help of Dong Soo, a volunteer at the church (played by Gang Dong-Won), Sang-Hyeon sells babies to infertile couples. K-pop singer Lee Ji-eun (IU) stars in her first feature film and plays the young mother who seems to be conflicted about leaving the baby with the two men. She wants to find a perfect family for the child.
‘Why don’t you ever speak to the child?’ they ask her.
She’s angry at having to abandon the baby, and angry at being attached to it. She is too young to take care of the baby, and yet old enough to know that the baby deserves a loving family. The three grownups and the baby Woo Song (you will fall in love with the adorable thing with funny eyebrows!) get into a decrepit laundromat van and travel to the location where the buyers are.
My heart leapt at seeing the familiar face of Bae Doona. She’s a wonderful actor, playing a cop in many K-dramas that you can watch on Netflix (The Silent Sea, Kingdom among them). In the film she plays a cop in a stakeout with another detective Lee Joo-Young. The two plant a tracker in the van and follow the trio through picturesque South Korea.
‘How dare you say that the baby has funny eyebrows! Have you looked at your own ugly faces?’
The young mother doesn't want to sell the baby to this couple. Another couple is unsuitable for some other reason. The tracker leads the cop to the trio’s location. And at one point we feel for the cops: Why are these three people behaving like the baby matters. Shouldn't they care more about the money?
This film is delicious because we don’t want to encourage such criminal behaviour, but we love their slow integration into a family that we would all want. Loving and caring and strange. This glorious mess becomes beautiful when a young orphan with football dreams chooses to travel with them (the enormously talented Lim Seung Soo plays Hae Jin). His joy is infectious. We are drenched in that joy and wish we were a part of this mad family as they step into the phone booth to take a picture of this memory.
You understand So Young’s betrayal and her penchant for cursing (IU does a commendable job), you understand the frustration of the cops and their ultimate part in baby Woo Song’s life. You are left guessing about Sang Hyun’s life… But you step out of the theatre leaving popcorn in the seat pocket (made soggy with your tears) knowing that you will hug your children and whisper into their ears, ‘Thank you for being born.’
Broker released in Indian theatres on January 20, 2023.
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