Shoplifters (2018) review

A very quirky "family"/commune - including Lily Franky, Sakura Ando and Mayu Matsuoka - live in a cramped apartment and work small-time jobs (construction, laundry, sex chat!) and, as the title implicates, take things from stores that they haven't paid for - one day they find a poor little girl (with burn marks on her arm) without her birth parents around ... and "adopt" her as their own. It has all the Kore-eda trademarks - charming kids, off-beat dialogue, nonstop scenes of his characters scarfing down food, an alternative living arrangement - and ties them into a touching story of outcasts/rejects bonding together before they are inevitably torn apart by the law. Considering the country this came out of - which, if I'm not mistaken, has a long history of strong beliefs regarding the sanctity of bloodlines - I found the message (which gets hammered home) about "choosing" the people you want to "be a family with" to be quite startling ... and if the character Shota (played by Jyo Kairi) finally whispering "Dad" doesn't get you a little weepy, I have nothing else to say.