“Shoplifters" at the Figge Art Museum -- December 12.
Thursday, December 12, 6:30 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
The Palme d'Or winner at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival that also received Best Foreign-Language Film nominations from the Academy Awards and Golden Globes, the Japanese family drama Shoplifters enjoys a special December 12 screening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum, with IndieWire's David Ehrlich praising the work as one that "stings (with) the loneliness of not belonging to anyone, and the messiness of sticking together."
As Shoplifters begins, a Tokyo family lives together in poverty: Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), an elderly woman who owns the home and supports them with her deceased husband's pension; Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), who works for an industrial laundry service; her husband Osam (Lily Franky), a day laborer forced to leave his job after twisting his ankle; Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), who works at a fetish club; and Shota (Kairi Jō), a young boy. Osamu and Shota routinely shoplift from stores, using a system of hand signals to communicate; Osamu tells Shota it is fine to steal things that have not been sold, as they do not belong to anyone. One cold night, however, they see Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), a neighborhood girl they regularly observe locked out on an apartment balcony, and bring her home with them. They only intend to have her stay for dinner, but after finding evidence of abuse, they choose not to return her. As Yuri bonds with her new family and learns to shoplift from Osamu and Shota, what results is a life-affirming film emerging from a story of despair, and one of the biggest critical and commercial successes from masterful filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda.
On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Shoplifters holds an approval rating of 99 percent based on 229 reviews, with the Web site's critical consensus reading: "Understated yet ultimately deeply affecting, Shoplifters adds another powerful chapter to director Hirokazu Kore-eda's richly humanistic filmography." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 93 out of 100, and The Guardian ranked the drama 15th in its Best Films of the 21st Century list. The Hollywood Reporter critic Deborah Young wrote that Shoplifters "contrasts the frigid emotions of socially correct behavior with the warmth and happiness of a dishonest lower-class family," while The Daily Telegraph awarded it five stars, hailing it as an "outstanding domestic drama, crafted by Kore-eda with crystalline insight and an unsparing emotional acuity."
Shoplifters will be screened in the Davenport museum's John Deere Auditorium on December 12, admission to the 6:30 p.m. showing is free, and with Barb Zimmerman serving as event underwriter, audiences are invited to socialize and discuss the film afterward with a complimentary glass of wine. For more information on the evening, call (563)326-7804 and visit FiggeArtMuseum.org.
