Busan at night.

A woman places a newborn in a baby hatch.

Two other women in the car are watching her.

Two men are sitting behind the baby hatch.

One of the two, who owns a tailor's shop, takes the baby with him.

The two men want to sell the baby to the highest bidder.

The tailor shop owner is being blackmailed by gangsters whom he owes money.

Then the mother of the child gets on the trail of the two.

She agrees to the sale, but wants a share of the proceeds.

Driving past, she recognizes one of the blackmailers.

Andrew Kilb

Feature correspondent in Berlin.

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It's easy to get a story going.

It's harder to keep them on track.

Every wrong move leads to a cliché.

The Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda sends the characters of his film "Broker" on a journey through South Korea without a fixed destination.

The three drive along the coast in a minibus to find a pair of buyers for the newborn, pursued by the policewomen who have been lurking outside the baby hatch.

Along the way, each and every one of them reveals what drives them, what they long for, what they fear.

That's the law of cinema.

Or better: good cinema.

Because what was true in the days of studio films and also inspired the works of the rebels against the system is no longer a matter of course.

Many stories have a beginning and an end

and in between, much is explained and little shown.

Also in Cannes.

"Thank you for being born"

But Hirokazu Kore-eda has mastered the trade.

It is clear from the start that his film will not have a happy ending.

The director of “Broker” avoids with great skill that it ends in a gangster tragedy like the dull competition entry “Nostalgia” by Mario Martone.

He keeps events in limbo until resolution becomes inevitable.

Along the way, the film collects moments and places that are as much a part of its narrative as it is of the world outside.

An orphanage on the beach.

A harbourcity.

A ferris wheel in an amusement park.

Once, when the travelers are lying in hotel beds, each of them says to the others, "Thank you for being born." Technically, this is just a script idea.

But it's one of those things you haven't heard in the cinema.

One wishes more directors at Cannes had the inspired professionalism of Hirokazu Kore-eda.

For example, the Frenchwoman Claire Denis, who lets an American and a British spy meet in a Central American military state in "The Stars at Noon".

When we first meet Trish (Margaret Qualley), it's like a moment out of a Tarantino movie, she's so sleepwalking cool towards the camera.

When Trish meets blonde Daniel (Joe Alwyn) for the first time, it's like an image from one of those spy films that douse a black and white worldview with multicolored drinks.

From there, The Stars at Noon curves toward the trivial at every turn of the story.

The film wants to be a love story with a political background, but what we see is above all an attempt

The fact that Claire Denis has relocated Denis Johnson's original from Nicaragua from 1984 to an unclear now, in which the characters are handling mobile phones and laptops, finally deprives the event of any plausibility.

The Stars at Noon was one of those disappointments that cannot be avoided at a festival where big names are always expected to be big.

It still hurts that the low blow came from Claire Denis of all people.

You would have been granted a prize in Cannes.

Finally a hug

Belgian director Lukas Dhont is best known for his directorial debut, "Girl," which tells of a trans girl's agonizing social and physical transformation.

In Cannes he showed his second feature film "Close".

Two boys, Léo and Rémi, have been friends since they were children and go to school together.

Their hugs, games, and scuffles are what you would call innocent, but as puberty looms on the horizon, the tone between them changes.

Léo now distances himself, he joins an ice hockey club, and the physical contact between the two becomes rougher, more violent.

When Rémi turns the violence against himself, Léo is wracked with guilt.

Finally, he confides in his friend's mother.

The film ends with her hugging.

You can see that Lukas Dhont learned his way of filmic storytelling from the Dardenne brothers.

But one also sees and hears that Dhont does not entirely trust the reduction that is the principle of the Dardennes.

Its soundtrack drips with pathos, its images revel in beauty.

"Close" falls short of the possibilities of its story by savoring it too much.

Luckily there is also a real Dardenne film in the competition at the Croisette.

The original.