- Baby Broker (ベイビーブローカー)
7/23/22 (Sat)
Koreeda Hirokazu’s latest offering, filmed in Korean, is a reexamination of themes on the notion of family that he explored to such great effect in Shoplifters. (The actual English name appears to be simply Broker, which may also be an attempt to play on the word’s meaning of poor. But that’s a terrible title, so I’ve gone with the Japanese, which uses the English wording.) It involves a “baby box”, a place set up at churches or hospitals allowing women to drop off unwanted newborns safely and anonymously. The concept was developed in Japan but has not taken real hold – only one box exists in the entire country, and only a bit over 100 children have been left there since it opened in 2007. (The situation wasn’t helped by a scandal soon upon opening when one father left a three-year-old boy, prompting censure from the prime minister.) It proved much more popular in Korea, where thousands of women have taken advantage of it, leaving the facility to find adoptive homes or orphanages for the toddlers. That situation could reflect the greater spread of Catholicism in Korea, which might put greater psychological pressure on women having to choose between abortion and abandonment. In any case, I had assumed that this was the reason the director chose to set the film in Pusan rather than Japan, but it turns out that he mainly wanted to work with Song Kang-ho, the actor best known for Parasite. Which, it turns out, is a good reason.
sekenbanashi 