Cannes 2025: Renoir movie review – Plan 75's Chie Hayakawa considers amorality in Japan
4/5 stars
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In Renoir, hardly anybody cries. Its eerily calm characters shed barely a tear even when caring for the dying, mourning the dead or struggling with their lifeless marriages.
Yet Chie Hayakawa's second feature isn't set in the kind of dystopia seen in her debut film
Plan 75 , in which the elderly are encouraged to participate in a state-sponsored euthanasia programme to make the country young again.
Set in Japan in the 1980s and revolving around the life of a schoolgirl whose father lies dying in hospital from cancer, Renoir is an empathetic portrait of a child's rite of passage in a society beset by very real moral dilemmas.
More importantly, Hayakawa offers a subtle, yet spot-on critique of the twisted social norms which would have made the inhuman scheme in Plan 75 a very distinct reality.
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Premiering in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Renoir is bolstered by Hayakawa's sound screenplay and solid mise-en-scène, in which her characters' frostiness is contrasted with the warm colour palettes of cluttered Japanese homes in summertime.
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