‘There are lots of films where you identify with the criminals’

In 2019, Hirokazu Koreeda, a contender for Japan’s most-admired living director, finally won the Palme d’Or he’d been circling at Cannes for a decade or so. That triumph with Shoplifters did not trigger the same sort of industry-churning sensation that Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite managed following its Palme a year later, but Koreeda has been making the most of his belated elevation. He went on to shoot The Truth, a sophisticated family drama, in Paris with Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Ethan Hawke. Now, moving to Korea, he impresses with Broker, a characteristically restrained study of morally compromised outsiders.

I am assuming it was the Palme win that allowed him to cross frontiers.

“As far as The Truth went, I have to mention that the project was going on from about 2015,” says Koreeda. “So, the Palme d’Or is not directly related. I believe, however, the offer to Ethan Hawke took place just after the Palme d’Or. So probably his involvement does have something to do with that. Possibly. But I am grateful that there have been many offers since. That was large in my career. It was humbling.”

Koreeda is always polite and modest about his achievements. Mind you, nothing in his films suggests a boastful, brash personality. Earlier work such as Nobody Knows and Like Father, Like Son confirmed a taste for moderation and an ability to stay just the right side of sentimentality.

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Despite taking place on the other side of the Korea Strait, Broker feels like a direct continuation of that Japanese work. The film stars Song Kang-ho, so good in Parasite, as a dubious individual who steals children from a nearby “baby box” – a spot in churches where mothers can anonymously abandon their newborn children – and sells them illegally on the adoption black market.

“I learned about the baby box during the research process for Like Father, Like Son,” he says. “The initial one I found out about was in Japan. There’s one in Kumamoto. And there about 10 babies have been put through the baby-box process. But the one I looked at in Korea, in Seoul, they had about 300 babies in a year, actually. That really stems from social differences.”

Broker feels very much like a companion piece to Shoplifters. That vaguely Dickensian film concerned a family of small-time criminals who take an abused young girl into their care. We are persuaded that society’s supposed villains can often be sounder on the truly important moral issues than are the law-abiding bourgeoisie.

Broker deals with a woman who, undergoing second thoughts after abandoning her baby, ends up part of the protagonist’s bumbling posse. As in Shoplifters, the criminals are ultimately quite lovable. This is a hard trick to pull off when dealing with such a morally murky business.

“I don’t believe that you can identify with a character just because they’re good, necessarily,” Koreeda says. “There are lots of films where you empathise with the criminals. But, within the terms of this film, what one character, the detective, says in the very beginning identifies what most audiences would be feeling. She says: ‘Don’t give birth to it if you’re going to abandon it.’ But she’s equally critical of the brokers – from her standpoint as a detective. That’s probably where the audience would start from too. What I wanted to achieve was to influence how that mindset could be challenged. And shifting that view is the ongoing thread of the film.”

I am interested to hear about the differences between the Japanese and Korean film businesses. There is, at this end of Europe, an inevitable, undoubtedly moronic tendency to bundle them together. Yet the industries have travelled along such different trajectories.

“The working environment is very efficient in Korea, but both in good and bad ways,” he says. “So before you start the filming process you need to have the final draft and the storyboard set completely. Whereas in Japan, it’s a little bit more loose. You kind of figure out as you go along. There is a hobbyist element to Japanese film-making. That puts a lot of pressure on the younger people – people who are working on the ground. For that reason a lot of younger people aren’t choosing to go into the industry. That’s a threat to the Japanese industry.”

What brought him to Korea rather than anywhere else?

“The initial starting point was the actors. It was the same as when I worked in France. Actors that I deeply admire approached me to work with them. So that was the starting point.”

I do feel the perception of the work is heightened. I’m very humbled by the reception. I’m not just being modest as well. I genuinely think that is inflated

Koreeda’s own upbringing sounds tough enough. His father, born in Taiwan, was detained for three years in Siberia after the second World War. Born in Tokyo, the youngest of three children, the future director excelled at volleyball before moving on to study at the prestigious Waseda University. The family, often strapped for cash, sometimes lived without running water.

It seems as if his passion for film came from a mother who, as a young woman, would potter off to the cinema and escape with western stars such as Ingrid Bergman and Vivien Leigh.

“The times that she could really enjoy the films at the cinema was before the second World War,” he says. “After the war she really didn’t have that kind of time. Then I was born. I’m sure she had a lot of things going on. She didn’t have time to sit down to really enjoy the films. The only times she would watch films was on television – dubbed versions of Hollywood and French cinema. That’s something that I’ve watched with her and that was my childhood filmic experience.”

That all makes a kind of sense. Koreeda’s films have connected with overseas audiences since he first landed spots at the larger festivals. He won the audience prize at San Sebastian for After Life back in 1998. He won best screenplay at San Sebastian for I Wish. He took the Jury Prize at Cannes for Like Father, Like Son. By the time Shoplifters took the Palme d’Or he was officially “overdue”. Critics enjoy comparing him to earlier Japanese greats such as Yasujirō Ozu and Mikio Naruse. But he has a delicate humour that is all his own.

“I am grateful. I am grateful for the receptions from the western world,” he says. “However, I think the reception is greater than I’ve actually achieved. I think that’s because a lot of the critics and the western audiences see Ozu and Naruse in my work. So I do feel the reception is slightly heightened – the perception of the work is heightened. I’m very humbled by the reception. I’m not just being modest as well. I genuinely think that is inflated.”

There is no question that he is sincere. He seems genuinely baffled to be regarded so highly. There is no sign, however, that his reputation is on the slide. Song Kang-ho won best actor for Broker at Cannes and the film has been lauded at every corner. He really does seem to be a plausible successor to Ozu and Naruse – but he is also a film-maker connected to contemporary concerns.

Koreeda returns to Japan for his next film, Monster. No plot has yet been released, but we do know that the soundtrack will be from the great electronic master Ryuichi Sakamoto. And then? It feels cheap to ask if he might consider an English-language picture – as if that were some inevitable destination – but he does seem open to all the world has to offer.

“I am interested in shooting more films in different languages” he says. “I think I will always be Japanese-based. However. I would be interested in working in the US as well. There isn’t anything concrete going on. But yes, that could be a potential idea.”

They’d be lucky to have him.

Broker opens on February 24th