– about a family living in poverty in Tokyo, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes – and – about a father whose son was switched at birth, and won the Jury Prize – has a gentle sensibility and a god-given instinct for where to place his camera.
So it may seem odd that his latest film is focused on two human traffickers, a sex worker and the female detectives on their trail., set in the world of South Korean “baby boxes”, is not a seedy tale of criminality. It is one of redemption, of broken, patched-up, limping makeshift families under duress.
So-young , a sex worker, drops her infant at one of the notorious “baby boxes”, where children can be safely left by young mothers who have nowhere else to turn.A laundry worker-turned-baby trafficker, played by the expressive Song Kang-ho , and his partner in crime Dong-soo have taken it upon themselves to rush the “adoption” process by selling babies on the black market.
But when So-young returns to see what has become of her baby, the three form a strange friendship, each outside traditional morality and the law and nonetheless on a journey to achieve a positive outcome for the child. As the trio pick up strays and are chased by two cops along the way , the results are slapstick, darkly funny, and then abruptly high stakes, when we are reminded all over again of the baby’s future that is in possible peril.