LOVE AND THEFT

HIROKAZU KORE-EDA’S CINEMA HAS ALWAYS BEEN that of the outsider. His characters are often dissociated from the status quo of a society driven by conformity and tradition. These include Akira in (2004), the eldest of the abandoned Fukushima children who has to assume adult responsibilities and take care of his siblings; Keita and Ryusei in (2013), whose lives are upended when they realize they were switched at birth due to a hospital mix-up and must learn to live with strangers who are their real biological parents; and Suzu from (2015), who gets adopted by her estranged half-sisters after their father’s death. These outsiders provide a window into the elaborate inner dynamics of domesticity, and a larger social canvas on which Kore-eda can investigate the ways families are formed by and give shape to social and cultural mores. In 1996, he made a documentary called , about a father who lost his short-term memory after a mishandled medical procedure. Through the grain of crude primitive video, the filmmaker presented the agony and confusion of a subject alienated from the flow of daily life, his family, and even his own memories and identity, with tenderness and empathy. Kore-eda, a consummate examinerreference points—remains ceaselessly curious about the emotions and motivations of the displaced.