{"id":520758,"date":"2026-06-05T21:47:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/520758\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T21:47:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:47:14","slug":"renoir-review-quirky-11-year-old-girl-processes-her-dads-imminent-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/520758\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Renoir’ review: Quirky 11-year-old girl processes her dad’s imminent death"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa isn\u2019t afraid to look death in the eye. The writer-director\u2019s 2022 feature debut, \u201cPlan 75,\u201d<\/a> imagined an unsettling future in which the elderly are offered a subsidy by the government to be euthanized. For her follow-up, she travels into her own past, drawing from memories of her father\u2019s battle with cancer.<\/p>\n

But while \u201cRenoir\u201d features no sci-fi elements, the nearness of oblivion remains just as prominent. Shorn of sentimentality, this gentle drama follows a quietly observant fifth-grader who feels the grim shadow of mortality all around her. How the character will absorb that realization is anyone\u2019s guess \u2014 including Hayakawa\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Newcomer Yui Suzuki stars as Fuki, who lives in a nondescript Tokyo suburb in 1987. Her soft-spoken dad, Keiji (Lily Franky), is suffering with terminal cancer in its final stages, the emaciated man spending as much time in the hospital as he does at home. Fuki\u2019s mother, Utako (Hikari Ishida), doesn\u2019t seem very despondent, though: One senses an emotional exhaustion that comes from preparing so long for the inevitable that she\u2019s now mostly numb, her anticipatory grief having given way to frayed nerves.<\/p>\n

Fuki\u2019s pre-mourning process is equally complicated. Outwardly, she shows no signs of being devastated by her dad\u2019s imminent passing, happily playing with him, almost in denial of his fate. But \u201cRenoir\u201d subtly suggests the impressionable girl is more aware than she lets on, surrounding her with random reminders of death. Local news breathlessly reports on random domestic murders. Even when Fuki gets away from the city, the camera lingers on her watching a campfire\u2019s dying embers. The film derives its title from the girl\u2019s interest in \u201cLittle Ir\u00e8ne,\u201d<\/a> a painting by influential French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. She asks if Renoir is still alive. No, he\u2019s dead too.<\/p>\n

Hayakawa pulls from her childhood in multiple ways for her sophomore feature, which premiered in competition at Cannes last year. \u201cRenoir\u201d takes place in 1987 specifically because that\u2019s the year she turned 11, and, like her protagonist, she was infatuated with \u201cLittle Ir\u00e8ne.\u201d But there\u2019s a refreshing absence of nostalgia in Hayakawa\u2019s conception of Fuki and her quizzical processing of her father\u2019s fatal illness.<\/p>\n

For school, Fuki writes an essay about her wish to be an orphan. She becomes obsessed with hypnotism and mind-reading, an unorthodox strategy to create a sense of control. And, occasionally, she wanders into daydreams that Hayakawa presents so matter-of-factly that viewers may sometimes be unsure if what they\u2019re seeing is actually happening. In \u201cRenoir,\u201d Fuki\u2019s flights of fancy are as naturalistic as her everyday life \u2014 a sharp reminder that, for children, imagination and reality are often indistinguishable.<\/p>\n

If death has been integral to Hayakawa\u2019s two features, it\u2019s society\u2019s callous reaction to aging that is her primary focus. \u201cPlan 75\u201d eschewed dystopian-thriller conventions to ponder how Japan might one day treat its senior citizens, viewing them as little more than a drain on resources. \u201cRenoir\u201d makes a similar point within a memory piece. Keiji is the one dying, but it\u2019s telling that Hayakawa centers the story on Fuki and Utako, who each, in their own way, seem more concerned about their own personal dramas.<\/p>\n

As Keiji\u2019s situation grows more dire, Utako enters the orbit of Toru (Ayumu Nakajima), a workplace advisor with whom she\u2019s instantly smitten, pondering pursuing him romantically. Ironically, Toru preaches the importance of good communication skills in the office, a lesson the film\u2019s guarded family would be wise to heed. While Utako hides her feelings for Toru, Fuki begins a secret odyssey in which she impulsively joins a phone dating service, engaging in conversations with a creepy college student (Ryota Bando) who pushes her to meet in person. This potentially traumatic subplot is the closest \u201cRenoir\u201d gets to traditional suspense, but even here Hayakawa adopts a muted approach, sidestepping shock value for bittersweet commentary about young people\u2019s confusion around love. Both Utako and Fuki chase after human connections fraught with danger, each trying to insulate themselves from the tragedy waiting at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cRenoir\u201d may be a delicate wisp of a film, but it\u2019s flecked with thoughtful questioning about whether childhood\u2019s sorrows leave permanent scars on us as adults. Suzuki exudes the fragility and buoyancy of adolescence, playing Fuki as someone constantly imbibing the world, rarely revealing what she\u2019s doing with that stimulus. The simplest moments resonate the strongest, such as when the moody 11-year-old holds a balloon over the balcony of her family\u2019s high-rise apartment, casually releasing her grip so that it tumbles to the ground far below. Does it speak to a desire to jump herself? \u201cRenoir\u201d won\u2019t say, but the character is so poised you feel confident she\u2019ll survive her father\u2019s death. Who knows: Maybe years from now, she\u2019ll even make a touching, emotionally astute movie about it.<\/p>\n

‘Renoir’<\/p>\n

In Japanese, with subtitles<\/p>\n

Not rated<\/p>\n

Running time:<\/b> 1 hour, 56 minutes<\/p>\n

Playing: <\/b>Opens Friday, June 5 at Landmark\u2019s Nuart Theatre<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa isn\u2019t afraid to look death in the eye. The writer-director\u2019s 2022 feature debut, \u201cPlan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[3915,48234,18,117,1652,32254,225015,597,225008,6152,225010,2598,19,225012,17,225013,327,225009,225014,225011],"class_list":["post-520758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-childhood","tag-dad","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-family","tag-father","tag-feature-debut","tag-film","tag-fuki","tag-girl","tag-hayakawa","tag-home","tag-ie","tag-imminent-death","tag-ireland","tag-keiji","tag-movies","tag-renoir","tag-toru","tag-utako"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}