Charming Japanese film about a family of charlatans, SHOPLIFTERS pilfers the heartstrings perpetrating a blind eye to the larceny of these light fingered larrikins.

The opening scene sees mischievous patriarch Osamu joined by a young boy, Shota, nimbly nicking merchandise from a grocery store, using a well rehearsed heist methodology.

On a happy high celebrating their successful sting, the pair spy an infant alone on a balcony in the freezing cold and decide to take the baby home with them.

Adding kidnapping to shoplifting doesn’t seem to faze them, especially when the napping kid appears to have been neglected and abused. The boys get home and the females of the family figure it’s not kidnapping if the parents don’t ask for a ransom.

The kid has been abused and emotionally abandoned, so the family of light-fingers abandon caution to the wind and unofficially adopt a new daughter into their rag tag tribe.

This family are fringe dwellers of Japanese society, eking out a pittance with menial jobs, topping up with petty larceny. But they are rich in love and that sense of commitment inundates the film.

SHOPLIFTERS is about making do, muddling through and basic binding of human relationships. It’s picture of cosy cohabitation that has its foundations in a shared complicity of doings not completely lawful.

It’s a study of cohesiveness in the face of economic slippery slide, of the precariousness of casual labour and the true meaning of family unfettered by mere biology.

SHOPLIFTERS boasts beautiful intuitive ensemble work that seamlessly capture the mundane joys of the domestic scene, especially the treasures of the table, the making and consuming of meals, the unquiet, ubiquitous noodle slurping and subsequent satiate contentment.

SHOPLIFTERS walked off with the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year and deservedly so. Written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, it is one of the surprisingly uplifting films of the year.