I've had such a great run with well-received foreign language films lately that I suppose I was bound to come across a dud eventually. I wanted to like 'Shoplifters' but it just didn't work for me. Firstly, it's an extremely slow film. Now I have no problem with slow films simply for being the reason that they're slow ('Amour' is one of my favourite films of all time) but to be slow you have to have a couple of things. You have to have power and you have to have purpose. You need scenes that tell the audience a lot more is going on than meets the eye and you have to be subliminally telling the audience that their patience will be worth the wait. 'Shoplifters' had neither of those.
Only the film industry could ask you to side with a family of shoplifters. It actually comes up in the film later on in terms of right and wrong with quotes such as "Whatever's in a store doesn't belong to anybody yet" and "As long as the store doesn't go bankrupt it's okay". Obviously films have the right to have their characters do anything, but in this case I felt like I was being asked to side with them.
By the time the film started to develop a little and reveal itself I simply no longer cared. A lot of films set out to win awards, but some are better at hiding that fact than others. 'Shoplifters' felt to me like a film trying very hard to check all the boxes in order to win awards. There are some tremendous foreign language films out there. 'Shoplifters' isn't one of them.
Only the film industry could ask you to side with a family of shoplifters. It actually comes up in the film later on in terms of right and wrong with quotes such as "Whatever's in a store doesn't belong to anybody yet" and "As long as the store doesn't go bankrupt it's okay". Obviously films have the right to have their characters do anything, but in this case I felt like I was being asked to side with them.
By the time the film started to develop a little and reveal itself I simply no longer cared. A lot of films set out to win awards, but some are better at hiding that fact than others. 'Shoplifters' felt to me like a film trying very hard to check all the boxes in order to win awards. There are some tremendous foreign language films out there. 'Shoplifters' isn't one of them.