Honor Among Thieves?

The premise of the film Shoplifters is a group of petty thieves (and as it turns out sex workers, murderers and kidnappers) form a family.  Yet, can there be trust or honor among thieves?  They are, after all, using each other (maybe exploiting each other) to make their lives better.  Gramma scams her ex-husband's family and hides the fact that their daughter is a sex worker. Her housemates are willing to hide Gramma's death and bury her so they can continue to collect her pension.  They are willing to run away and abandon Shota when he is captured by the police.  Is the movie trying to justify their crimes or indict them?  Is it telling us that crime doesn't pay?  What is the film telling us about crime and community, about morality and family?

Down and Out in Tokyo

 Shoplifters focuses on the fringes of Japanese society, examining the outskirts of its economy.  The main characters are a retired pensioner, a construction worker, a sex worker, and a laundry worker and two neglected children.  The make ends meet by sharing the pensioner's small home and her pension, supplementing their meagre incomes with shoplifting.  Is the film an expose of injustice?  A study of resilience?  A political attack on the status quo?  What is the film saying about economic class and political leadership in contemporary Japan?

All in the Family, Part 2

 Shoplifters tells the story of an unusual family -- members are not connected by bonds of blood but of choice.  A aged pensioner has opened her home to a down-on-their-luck couple, the daughter of her ex-husband's new family who is playing hooky from her school and two neglected children found on the street.  Furthermore, they scrape by in part by engaging in shoplifting. This is not your grandfather's (read Ozu's) vision of family life.  Nonetheless, characters in the film share bonds of affection, offer advice and participate together in rites of passage and call each other (or in some cases do not) by names of familial relations.  Sometimes they even discuss whether their arrangement is even better than a traditional family ("Less expectations" the grandma says on the beach).  Is the "family" in the film a real family -- or are they just pretending?  Are bonds of blood better or worse or equivalent to bonds of choice (and are these bonds really about choice)?  Does the fact that these relationships are also financial and that "family" members were willing to abandon each other negate the worth of these bonds?  What is the film saying about what makes a family?