Broker (2022)
A film about family and belonging.
I am currently recovering from balling my eyes out watching Broker (2022).
The film follows Ha Sang-hyeon and Dong-soo, “brokers” of abandoned babies to adoptive parents on the black market, as they attempt to arrange the adoption of Moon So-young’s baby, Woo-sung, with a loving family. Dong-soo himself was abandoned as a baby and remained in an orphanage waiting for his mother to return as her note promised. She never does. The four are joined by little Hae-jin, a foster child from Dong-soo’s orphanage who’s passed the age at which he can reasonably hope for adoption. Hae-jin regards Woo-sung as his little brother, Dong-soo as his big brother, and Ha Sang-hyeon as his adoptive father. Ha Sang-hyeon is estranged from his wife, whom he still loves, and his daughter, who barely recognizes him as a father. Moon So-young is similarly alone in the world and works as a prostitute to make ends meet.
Over the course of the film, the motley crew creates the family which they all lack independently. Dong-soo and Ha Sang-hyeon treat Hae-jin and Woo-sun as their own son, Dong-soo and Moon So-young fall in love, and the five misfits (well, the four of them that can speak) all thank each other for being born—something that none of them had heard before. At this point in the film, everyone in the cinema was stifling sobs and blowing their noses. I was not exempt from this. Tragically, and predictably, the family is split up by the law and Dong-soo and Moon So-young go to prison. Soo-jin, the police officer tracking them along with Detective Lee, adopts Woo-sung herself and raises him with her loving husband—not all is lost.
Considering the failures of the legal adoption system and orphanages, the film asks the audience to question whether the brokers are amoral child-traffickers or arbitraging storks. I leave the answer of this question to the reader and encourage her to watch the film.