Broker (브로커)
Simultaneously broke and melted my heart with engaging, complex characters and a who knows where it will all end story. A South Korean drama written and directed by Japanese film maker Hirokazu Kore-eda (Hirokazu Koreeda).
It had the potential to be quite grim as a drama about a young woman giving her baby up for adoption and then sale to a child-less couple found on the internet. Yet no-one is quite as they appear nor do they stay where they are. Everyone to an extent does seem to be corrupt to begin with — specialist laundry and tailor Ha Sang-hyeon (Song Kang-ho) works also at a local church baby box scheme, where he looks out for babies which could be sold to child-less couples to pay off his gambling debts. He has to avoid local gangsters keen to collect on his outstanding debts. A younger man, Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won), is his accomplice in his get rich quick schemes. It’s worrying as the baby is abandoned on the forecourt of the church in the rain — he doesn’t even make it into the warm and secure protective box chute.
First seen wandering about in pouring rain, Moon So-young (Lee Ji-eun) returns to the church to redeem her abandoned baby — who has now disappeared into the laundry baby black market. In the back ground are a female cop duo who are on the trail of the baby market and determined to stamp it out — we encounter them through a maelstrom of snacks and in-car meals and they make a great double act. Setting traps in the form of fake adoptee couples, they coach the actors in advance to sound authentic and catch the criminals in the act of baby sale/purchase. Bae Doona’s younger cop (Soo-jin) starts trying to connect to Moon So-young and convince her to do the right thing. Along the way we learn that her baby is the result of an affair with a gangster businessman who has been murdered and seems to have been the older female detective’s philandering husband!
So switching from criminal to detective drama the movie now turns into a road trip as baby and men head off to a local children’s home with the baby’s mother in tow to make wider contacts and meet the potential baby buyers/illegal adoptees. Along the way they gain a stow-away, charming and cheeky Hae-jin (Im Seung-soo), a child from the children’s home where Dong-soo grew up and who dreams of a family, football and going to a theme park. We start to see how young and vulnerable Moon is as well as how she’s had to fight fiercely to protect herself and her son; indeed how vulnerable they all are.
Uniquely they become a embryonic family and romance appears to be developing, as well as surrogate fathers. The first swoop fails as the fake adoptee parents are not trusted by this selling family, the price is too low and they all have to set up a new plan pretty quickly.
Incredible drama, unique relationships and many twists and turns with an unexpected ending. Star of the show is baby Woo-sung who gathers many protectors around him as he suddenly becomes ill and then is ‘fathered’ by the two men who see him as a business opportunity. He also gains an older brother in the form of the stow-away! So much to say to us about family, parenting, fatherhood, dreams and love without hiding from or brushing over the corruption, poverty and ethics of it all.
