The Big Empty

Air Doll (2009) - Kore-eda Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll appears to be tackling the modern society's illness - urban loneliness and soullessness, the themes explored by by other prominent Japanese auteurs of its time, namely, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sion Sono and Shinji Aoyama, with Korean actress Bae Doona (Linda, Linda, Linda, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Host). The result is a mixed bag.

Adapted from a manga, about a blow-up sex doll, Air Doll is an odd choice for Kore-eda in his mid-career, because he had always been regarded as a Ozu's heir apparent with his gentle, life affirming, if not death obsessed films. It concerns a middle-aged man living alone with his sex doll (Bae), named after his ex-girlfriend Nozomi, as a companion. He talks to her and bathes her and has sex with her. While he is out working as a waiter at a restaurant, Nozomi comes to life and walks around the town. She even gets a job at a video rental store. People around her are unbothered by her demeanor or she has seam lines around her body. With her big eyes and blank expression, Bae approaches the role with pure wonder and innocence of a new born child.

Nozomi's accented Japanese narration serves well as an inanimate object which came to life and just gained a heart. Walking around and meeting people, observing and experiencing human conditions, she learns that there are others out there that compliment you and complete you to have a full life, that people need one another. She has an accident at the job and punctures her arm and deflates and her colleague Junichi (Arata) puts a plastic tape on her arm and blows air back into her navel. The romance begins. He says she and he are not unlike. He feels empty inside as well. He says many feel that way. She then experiences heartbreak, realizing that she is someone else's mere substitution.

She even tracks down her maker (Joe Odagiri). He philosophically explains that human life is both sad and beautiful. But when all is said and done, we are either burnable (humans) or unburnable (sex dolls, because of environmental restrictions) garbage. Yes, once it gets dark, it never lets up.

The film is closer to Spielberg's A.I- Dark yet saccharine. There are secondary stories of other characters we get only glimpses of, and don't quite resonate as it should. Air Doll is not quite the right fit for genteel filmmaker.

Baby Box

Broker (2022) - Kore-eda Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda's foray into working internationally continues with Broker, a Korea set family drama with all Korean cast.
As the director of many films that prodded the traditional notion of family, such as Nobody Knows, Like Father Like Son, After the Storm and Shoplifters, he continues with Broker, a heartfelt film about makeshift family, which feels like a grittier and edgier version of its predecessor, Shoplifters. It seems that the film is the culmination of Kore-eda's desire to work with Korean actors within the booming Korean film industry (produced by CJ Entertainment) despite not speaking the language. Broker is a beautifully written and acted film that has just as much emotional resonance as his many celebrated Japanese films.

It's a rainy night in Busan, where a young mother, Soyoung (Lee Jieun, aka IU, a K-pop superstar) abandoning her newborn baby in front of a church. There is a baby box at the entrance where a unwanted baby can be dropped annonymously. The hesitant mother drops the baby right in front of the box and runs away, not knowing she is watched by two law inforcement agents (Bae Doona and Lee Juyoung), who have been doing a sting operation on the suspected baby-selling, broker operation by the church workers. Also witnessing the drop off are Sanghyeon (Song Kangho) and Dongsoo (Gang Dongwon), looking at the monitor inside the Church. They find the note with the baby by Soonjin that she will come back to fetch him soon. No date or contact info. So starts Broker, an ensemble piece with superb acting from everybody involved. It becomes a road movie as Soojin comes back to claim the baby and gets involved in underground baby broker business with Sanghyeon and Dongsoo, as they try to find a suitable parents-to-be for the baby (at the highest price). Boys can pull in upwards of 10,000,000 won ($76,000) and girls only half that. With the baby and an orphan boy from the orphanage where Dongsoo grew up in-tow, they make a makeshift family, traveling all over southern part of Korea to meet possible adoptive parents.

These are all down and out characters whose lives have been nothing but rosy. Kore-eda draws sharply on their resentment and distrust in each other in the beginning, but slowly builds on their commonality and innate human decency. The biggest 'change of heart' moment belongs to Bae Doona's Soojin, a veteran police woman whose hatred of Soyoung, from "Why even have a baby, only to abandon it?" to understanding people's circumstances as to why the decision was made. It also turns out Soyoung is on the run because she accidentally killed the rich baby daddy who didn't want the baby.

In a polarized era where the issue of abortion rights is much politicized, Broker might be seen as naive by not putting emphasis on the issue. But it has some sharp criticism on our modern society putting blames soley on women and lack of men's involvement in raising one and our collective role in raising the neglected ones in general. In a very touching scene, the orphan boy who hid himself in Sanghyeon's old van to sneak out of the orphanage, asks Soyoung to give a prayer before they all go to sleep in a hotel room. So Soyoung thanks everyone for being born. We do not have a say in us being born. Our circumstances might be different. But we are all here so we might as well give thanks.

Song Kangho is wonderful as usual. He portrayal of Sanghyeon, a divorced man dreaming of his past, gives much humanity and subtle humor, very much resembling Lily Franky in Shoplifters. Bae Doona is also great as a cold hearted detective slowly realizing that criminals are not so different than the rest of us, that they are just trying to get by. We also get to see her eat a lot of junkfood in the car and being mean to her underling. The real acting revelation is Lee Jieun as a young mom. Her bitterness, her anxious stares tell thousands stories. Her looks convey both volatility and hidden tenderness.

I did not know that Baby Box was a thing. And that there is a black market for babies for chidless parents who don't want to go through legal huddles to adopt. And there are so many orphans who grow up dreaming of their mother returning to pick them up. All these nicely fit into Kore-eda universe of what consitutes a 'family'. Just like Shoplifters, everyone in Broker knows that they won't get a second chance at having a family. Everyone knows that good things will not last. What counts is the human connections made by this particular brokering and the extended parenting it created. That the kid will be all right.