Broker Movie Review: Koreeda Hirokazu's Korean Drama Assembles An Oddball 'family' That Rallies Around A Baby
Kore-Ida Hirokazu explores the meaning of family again in the new K-drama Broker. The film starring Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Donna Bae, Lee Ji-eun aka IU and Lee Joo-young won two awards at last year's Cannes Film Festival, the Ecumenical Jury Award and Best Actor Song. Kang Ho. The Medium focuses on a young woman who abandons her child and finds herself in partnership with two mediums who want to raise the child for a wealthy couple. ( Also Read: Full List of Cannes Winners: Sweden's Triangle of Sorrows Wins Palme d'Or, Best Documentary Film for "It All Breathes India" )
This is the second film by a non-native Japanese director, following the 2019 French drama The Truth (La vérité). With the help of South Korean actors, this heartwarming drama brings together an exotic group around a child promote their well-being. The result is a high-impact piece that tugs at the heartstrings. Moon Soo Young, played by Lee Ji Eun, is a young mother who thinks she's leaving her son Woo Sung at the Busan family church and finds him in the hands of two pimps.
Star Dependent Song convinces Kang-ho and Gang Dong-won to go with them as middlemen to do business. But as anyone could have predicted, fate has something else in store for them, especially two female police officers who are out to catch them in the act. And you watch helplessly as the characters slowly form a makeshift family, all looking for the other, knowing that not everything will end well.
Kore-Ida has explored the familial relationships between these strangers in his previous films, such as Father, Son (2013) to Shoplift (2018). With each of these award-winning features, the filmmakers prove once again that blood isn't the only thing that keeps families together. The people who care for you and support you when the chips are down are what ultimately define the family within.
Brokers are no different. All the main characters have a broken relationship with their family. Some of them were really orphans and have feelings of hatred towards their parents who abandoned them. As the film progresses, the characters spend more time together, moving from town to town to find suitable fathers for Wu Song. They slowly bond after Jang Dong-won's character Dong-soo gently says, "This car is full of liars."
But despite each other's good intentions, problems bigger than the real world loom large, with murder and guilt; This can easily be overlooked. The actors, especially stars Song Kang Ho and Lee Ji Eun, nailed the emotional scenes. Im Seung-soo, who played orphan Hae-jin and young Woo-sung, managed to make his mark.
Medium explores some of the most important issues of adoption and foster care with some dark humor and lots of honest questions. There are no easy answers for many. But the Korean movie takes a while to reach its devastating conclusion. In a way, it reminds me of another Korean movie, Parasite (2019), where some of the character arcs end up in limbo. This movie is emotional in that it allows some characters to heal, but also heartbreaking in that it lets others down. If you liked Kore-Ida Hirokazu's previous works, don't miss this new drama.
