Shoplifters

Hirokazu Koreeda's Shoplifters is one of the warmest features of recent cinema. Koreeda's portrait of a band of miscreants who adopt a discarded and abused child, Yuri, resonates with family ritual and sensuality, but the long arm of the law is never far. Like Fagin's adoption of Oliver Twist into his gang, the embrace of an innocent dooms the brigands. Their warren denotes their status as the bottom dwellers of Japan. Yet, Koreeda imbues their lair with familial cheer and delight in both sex and, especially, food. Koreeda's astonishing players often reveal their true selves by how they slurp their noodles. The moral is the old saw that our true family is the one we pick. Koreeda is able to render his downtrodden protagonist with more dimensionality than Cuaron does in the similarly themed Roma.

The film's pace is pokey, but that delays recognition of the true perfidy of the band and increases our interest in the fate of young Yuri. The final shot of Yuri entrapped and alone is heartrending.