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19-05-2025
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‘Renoir' Review: An 11-Year-Old Girl Ponders the Mysteries of the Universe in Chie Hayakawa's Extremely Low-Key Coming-of-Age Drama
An article published in a 1982 edition of the research journal Social Science & Medicine found that an overwhelming percentage of Japanese doctors neglected to share terminal diagnoses with their patients, as they felt it was unethical to condemn someone to a death sentence. That information is only glancingly alluded to in Chie Hayakawa's 'Renoir,' a diaphanous coming-of-age story that's only clouded by the burden of unbecoming (no surprise to anyone familiar with Hayawaka's dystopian euthanasia drama 'Plan 75'), but the principle behind it haunts the film's young heroine all summer long. Her name is Fuki (gifted 11-year-old Yui Suzuki), she lives in a sunny Tokyo suburb at some point during the country's transitional period in the late 1980s, and she's almost subconsciously convinced that people aren't telling her something. There's a gap between her and the rest of the world, and it only grows wider after her dad ('Shoplifters' star Lily Franky) is admitted to the hospital during the final months of his bout with cancer. It's not as if the girl doesn't know about death (her short story 'I'd Like to Be an Orphan' has one of her teachers asking a lot of questions answered by the story), but the distance between recognizing mortality and living in its shadow is vast, and Fuki is desperate for someone to help close it for her. More from IndieWire 'Highest 2 Lowest' Review: Spike Lee Returns with a Jarringly Fun and Upbeat Riff on One of Akira Kurosawa's Bleakest Films 'Splitsville' Review: Open-Relationship Comedy from 'The Climb' Team Hits All the Right Notes Of course, Fuki doesn't know what she doesn't know, and her mother Utako (Ishida Hikari) — who often talks as if her daughter weren't able to hear her — has no interest in telling her. 'Do we cry because we feel sorry for the dead,' the girl asks herself in a rare snippet of voiceover, 'or because we feel sorry for ourselves?' Her only answer is to not cry at all; to keep a straight face and listen for the secret frequencies of the universe for guidance. Inspired by an American mentalist she sees on TV, the ever-imaginative Fuki becomes obsessed with telepathy; it starts with guessing what card someone might be thinking of, and quickly evolves into 'hypnotizing' a grief-stricken neighbor into talking about her late husband. Later, Fuki will neigh at a horse in an effort to understand them, listen to her own voice echo around a tunnel in the hopes of hearing something she couldn't distill from her thoughts, and even meet a grown man from a telephone dating service in a singularly harrowing sequence that reflects Hayakawa's continued fascination with the darkest parts of the human psyche. It's a fascination that's on full display from the opening moments of 'Renoir,' and renders the entire film allergic to the cuteness that seeps into so many coming-of-age stories like it. Animated by the creative spark that pops and fizzes behind Suzuki's eyes at all times, Fuki remains a compelling figure despite her refusal to betray her feelings to the outside world, and 'Renoir' leans on the character's quiet mystery as the movie drifts from one semi-connected episode to the next. Hayakawa is a plaintive storyteller who refuses to indulge in emotional cheats of any kind, and would rather a scene be impenetrably oblique than overexplain its purpose. 'Renoir' may not be quite as sterile as 'Plan 75' (a low bar), but the film is reserved enough for its title — a reference to 'the painter of happiness,' whose work is glimpsed for a half-second in the background of one shot — to feel like a perverse joke at Fuki's expense. It's possible that Hayakawa may have been inspired by the warm lighting found in some of Renoir's work, but there are few moments in which she allows her movie to indulge in the effervescence of a Tokyo summer, and even fewer in which she conflates the country's rapid transition with the equally seismic changes that befall her young heroine. Hayakawa's script eschews any sweeping commentary in favor of a more honest and incidental portrait of growing up — one that would rather be true to the reality of Fuki's experience than mold it to fit the poetic forms of adult memory. The film's plotting is elliptical (Utako's maybe affair with the counselor at her anger management seminar is filtered through a child's understanding), its direction unimposing to the point of feeling unformed, and its poignancy more rooted in the slow build of Fuki's snowballing isolation than it is in the moment when someone finally breaks through it. There are a handful of memorable episodes along the way, such as the nightmare fuel of Fuki's aforementioned pedophile encounter, and the much nicer sequence in which she spends a day at the track with her father, but incidents like that only have so much value to a story whose beats only matter so far as they help broker Fuki's connection to the world beyond her. As would be the case in real life, there's no single incident that explains how Fuki grows over the course of that one fateful summer (even if one especially meaningful gesture towards the end helps pull her out of her silent isolation). But 'Renoir' — with its faint traces of sentiment, and complete absence of sentimentality — delicately articulates the girl's inner child in a way that allows us to feel it expand across the season. Life can try to keep its secrets from her, but it's only a matter of time before someone as curious and deprived as Fuki is able to discover them all for herself. 'Renoir' premiered in Competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
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19-05-2025
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Chie Hayakawa on Revisiting the Pain and Wonder of Childhood in Cannes Film ‘Renoir'
Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa made a quiet but unforgettable entrance onto the world stage with her 2022 feature debut Plan 75, a haunting dystopian vision of state-sponsored euthanasia for the elderly. Selected for Cannes' Un Certain Regard section, the film earned the Camera d'Or Special Mention and introduced Hayakawa as a director with an artfully restrained style and a compassionate eye for human frailty. Now, just three years later, she returns to the Croisette with Renoir, an intimate and emotionally charged childhood drama that marks her first appearance in the festival's main competition. Where Plan 75 was shaped by conceptual clarity and allegorical heft, Renoir is rooted in something looser and more elusive: the spontaneous feelings and fractured memories of childhood. Set in suburban Tokyo in 1987, the film centers on 11-year-old Fuki, a sensitive girl who retreats into her imagination as she watches her father succumb to terminal cancer and her small family fracture under the weight of impending grief. As her parents struggle with sorrow in their own isolated ways, Fuki becomes adorably fixated on telepathy and the occult, convinced that she can bridge the emotional chasms around her through the invisible powers of the mind. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'The Chronology of Water' Review: Kristen Stewart Makes a Boldly Assured Directing Debut, Starring a Transformative Imogen Poots Spike Lee Toasts 'Highest 2 Lowest' With The Hollywood Reporter and Threads at Cannes Bash Ruben Östlund's 'The Entertainment System Is Down' Sells to Memento for France For Hayakawa, Renoir is both a deeply personal film and a deliberate departure. 'I wanted to take a different approach this time,' she explains. 'Rather than building the film around a clear concept or message, I began with fragments — emotions and images from my own childhood — and allowed the story to emerge organically.' Hayakawa's own father died of cancer when she was young, and many of Fuki's shifting feelings — guilt, yearning, fear and awe — mirror the director's own conflicted experiences from that time. 'I'm trying to look at my childhood with compassion,' she says. 'To acknowledge the loneliness, the confusion, the selfishness—and still find a way to forgive myself and connect with others.' Despite its period-specific setting, Renoir resists nostalgia and sentimentality. Hayakawa says she chose 1987 not just because she was the same age as Fuki then, but because it was a pivotal moment in Japan's postwar identity — at the height of the country's economic bubble, when material excess masked a growing sense of spiritual emptiness. 'It was a time when people were intoxicated by prosperity but also deeply lonely,' she explains. 'I wanted to portray how fragile and precious people are, especially when they're quietly breaking apart.' The title Renoir refers to the French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir's painting 'Little Irène,' a replica of which Fuki demands her father buy her in the film. The connection there is also personal: Hayakawa's father bought her the same print when she was a child, and the image has stayed with her ever since. 'The story's connection to the painting or to Renoir the artist doesn't run deeper than that,' she says. 'Among the great impressionists, Renoir is particularly popular in Japan, and in the 1980s replicas of his paintings could be found on the walls of many homes. Such replicas were a symbol of Japan's admiration of the West at the time and its desire to 'catch up.'' Produced by Tokyo-based Loaded Films, Renoir reunites many of Hayakawa's trusted collaborators from Plan 75, including DP Hideho Urata, composer Rémi Boubal, and editor Anne Klotz. The cast features a stunning breakout performance from 11-year-old Yui Suzuki, alongside pair of Japan's most accomplished veteran actors, Lily Franky (Shoplifters, Like Father, Like Son) and Hikari Ishida. The Hollywood Reporter connected with Hayakawa in Japan ahead of Renoir's world premiere. Where did the premise and your approach to Renoir come from? My previous film, Plan 75, was structured around a very clear concept. You know, you make a film because you want to express something that can only be said cinematically. But after I finished Plan 75 and started doing interviews, I sort of had to explain the premise and the social issues in Japan that inspired it over and over. And that kind of wore me out, and sometimes I doubted my explanations about the film. So I wanted to take a different approach this time and see what kind of film I would make if I started a project without having a clear vision. Instead of a concept or issue-driven film, I wanted to make something purely emotional. When I started writing the script it was just a collection of all these little episodes I had been thinking about since I was a teenager. They didn't really connect to each other at all, and I didn't have any strong concept or premise to tie them together. So you deliberately made a film that you wouldn't be able to articulate in words — and now I'm going to ask you to explain it all in words. Hmm. (Laughs) That's how did you find your way to a story? It was very difficult. There were originally a lot more characters in it, but over time I narrowed down all of the episodes until it came to portray one summer in one little girl's life. But I still didn't really have a concrete theme in the beginning, or even during the process of writing and shooting. It wasn't until the editing phase that I realized maybe it was a story about this girl who doesn't quite have compassion for others, but then she gradually learns what real pain is — and through that pain, she takes one step towards adulthood. But that only came to be by linking all of the little episodes that make up the movie. As I was doing it, I felt like I was making some kind of sculpture out of clay — trying to shape something, but I don't know what it is. Only through the process of actually making the film did the story take shape. I imagine it could be quite scary to go that deep into making a film without yet knowing what it's really about. It was really stressful, but fun too — because I really didn't know what the result would be. Sometimes I was totally without confidence, and other times I simply enjoyed looking forward to seeing what the film would turn into. On the first day of the shoot, I held a meeting with my whole team and said, 'To be honest, I'm not sure if this movie is going to be any good.' Gradually, though, by working with my creative team and the actors, I started to feel it — that there was going to be a very strong film there. But I still couldn't see the full picture, and that was quite have to talk about your lead actress, Yui Suzuki, who plays 11-year-old Fuki. She's a revelation. She seems like a true natural. How'd you find her?So, I was aware that the casting of Fuki would be the most important part of making this film. So I was expecting to audition hundreds of kids. That's what I was prepared for. But Yui was the very first girl we had come to audition. She had appeared in a college student film that was shown at an Independent film festival in Japan, and one of my producers had done the translation and English subtitling for that film, and another producer was a member of the jury at that festival and had seen it. Both of them eagerly recommended her to me, saying she's really good. So we called her in to audition and I immediately thought she's amazing and could be the one. But she was the very first person we had seen, so I thought, 'I can't decide already, I have to see more girls.' So we held many more auditions but Yui was always on my mind, and after one or two months, I just said, 'Okay, yes, Yui is the one.' Had you worked with child actors before? How did you approach your collaboration with her? It's such a sensitive performance. No, this was the very first time for me to work with a child actor. She started modeling when she was a baby, so she's incredibly comfortable in front of a camera. It's like she doesn't even feel it. During one of our first conversations, I asked her, 'What are your strengths?' And she said, 'I'm really good at imitating animals.' And then she did an amazing horse sound, and a cat, and a sheep — and they were all perfect. Her reaction was so instinctual. So I immediately wrote that into my script. There were so many things about her that inspired me, lots of details that made it into the script. She was a big source of inspiration. But it was my first time working with a kid, so I was reading lots of books and interviews with directors about different approaches to working with child actors. Some directors work with them from a script, and others rely entirely on improvisation and even do things to make them cry when necessary. But I really wanted to respect her as a collaborator. She was already 11 years old and I thought she should understand the nature of the project she's involved in. So I tried to explain the story and the style of the film to her as much as I could. But as I said, I was still grasping at it myself. One of my biggest influences for this project was the Spanish film, The Spirit of the Beehive [by Víctor Erice]. So I sent Yui a DVD and asked her to watch it, and explained to her that the film we are trying to make is not like anything you usually see on TV in Japan. What was her reaction?She said it was her first time watching a foreign film and that she was kind of scared beforehand. But she said she really loved it, and that she understands that it seems difficult, but that we're trying to understand the feelings of kids — and she really liked that. And how did you work with her on set? Once we started doing rehearsals and shooting, I realized that she really didn't need my direction at all. I didn't really direct her in any detail. I would just say, 'This is the situation, and you can just walk this way and then sit down over there' — really simple things like that. I didn't really need to explain to her how she should feel, or what kind of face she should make, or anythign like that. She's very natural and she would add clay to the sculpture in her own way. I really came to trust and rely on her. She's a real artist. You've mentioned how you deliberately wanted to make a film quite different from . But I have to say, I did see some real continuity between the protagonists — particularly Chieko Baisho's character near the end of . There's sort of an existentialist quality, or a mindfulness and sensory joy in the way your protagonists relate to their world. They struck me as similar characters who happen to be on opposite ends of the and the protagonist of Plan 75, they both appear passive in a way. They always seem to be just taking things in — the people and the situations around them — but we also get a strong sense of emotion from them somehow. We feel their spirit. So, in that sense, I agree that there's a real connection between these characters. Of course, there's a shared sensibility because they were both created by the same writer/director, I suppose.I have to say, even though we've only met a couple of times, I found that Yui kind of looks like a young version of you — and even has a similar vibe to you. Did you see her as your avatar to an extent?(Laughs) Well, not really. When I was casting the protagonist, I remember thinking that the most important quality was that she had to be very attractive. Not that she needed to be beautiful — not in that way — but she should have a quality where people can't help but keep watching her. I didn't at all try to find someone who looks like me, but during the shoot, some of my collaborators did say to me, 'Hey, Fuki kind of looks like you.' But I really didn't aspire to make an autobiographical movie. If anything, I think maybe I started subtly imitating her, because I was always studying her so closely through the monitor on set. You know when you spend a lot of time with someone, you start unintentionally imitating their facial expressions? It may have partly been that. A core observation I kept returning to while watching the film is the way children feel things very intensely but seldom have the intellectual framework or language to understand and communicate what they're going through. So I just loved how you used dream sequences as a way of gaining access to Fuki's emotional world. At the beginning, she's going through some very tough emotional moments without really realizing it, and she has quite strange and scary nightmares. By the end, when she finally gets a warm hug from a teacher who recognizes what she's going through — and she gets to enjoy a happy day of playing at the beach — we get that adorable, cheerful dream of Fuki aboard a glamorous boat party — which is just the sort of thing you would hope for a little girl to dream about. I don't really have a question here, but you handled all of that so elegantly — it makes me teary-eyed just thinking about it. Well, I'm really happy to hear that, because I've gotten a lot of comments from people asking why those scenes are in there, or what they are supposed to mean. So that's a relief. Do you see yourself as part of a humanist filmmaking tradition in Japan? For example, it seems inevitable that Hirokazu Kore-eda will be referenced in discussions of this film — especially in Cannes, where he's a regular — because of its tone and the graceful foregrounding of a child actor. Yes, I'm expecting that people will refer to Kore-eda-san, because of the theme and the child actor part. I even cast Lily Franky, who is one of his regular actors. I myself feel Kore-eda-san's influence. I got to know his films when I was a high school student and I love his work. But an even bigger influence on this film was Somai Shinji's Moving. I reference that film a lot. As for the visual style, before shooting I spoke with my DP a lot about Moving, The Spirit of the Beehive and Edward Yang's Yi Yi. So there are several direct influences. So, after debuting in Un Certain Regard three years ago with , you're in Cannes main competition with this year. It seems you're fast becoming a member of 'the Cannes family' as Thierry Frémaux likes to call it. How are you feeling about it all?When I first saw my name among all of those other amazing directors on the competition lineup, it felt surreal. Of course, I'm honored, but so far, it just feels very weird. It doesn't seem real yet. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
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18-05-2025
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‘Renoir' Review: A Delicate and Touching Tokyo-Set Portrait of a Girl's Loneliness
In her debut feature Plan 75, which premiered at Cannes in 2022, Chie Hayakawa offered a quietly disconcerting vision of the future in which Japanese residents over the age of 75 could elect to be euthanized. At first the program seems to be benign, but Hayakawa's film steadily reveals how the policy thrives on the cruel capitalist tenet that people are disposable. Plan 75 won a 'special mention' Camera d'Or (best first film) prize that year and announced Hayakawa as a director to watch. Now, three years later, the Japanese filmmaker turns her considered eye to the past. Premiering in competition at Cannes, Renoir is a poetic meditation on a crucial summer in the life of 11-year-old Fuki (a gorgeous turn by newcomer Yui Suzuki) as she navigates her father's battle with cancer, her mother's ambient stress and persistent loneliness. The film, set in suburban Tokyo in 1987, moves at the speed of a leisurely stroll, using direct, but by no means harsh, cuts (editing is by Anne Klotz) to carry us from one scenario to the next. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Nouvelle Vague' Review: Richard Linklater's Enjoyable Deep Dive Celebrates How Godard's 'Breathless' Came to Life Cannes Hidden Gem: 'A Useful Ghost' Is a Socio-Political Parable Starring a Vacuum Cleaner Cannes: Young Danish Collective Reboots Dogma for New Generation We follow Fuki as she wanders the city and retreats into her imagination. Hobbies are acquired, friends are made, enemies procured and people lost. Throughout, Hayakawa maintains a steady control of this delicate story. There are moments toward the end when Renoir takes sentimental turns that feel a touch too obvious for its subtle framing. Still, the film will likely find a life outside the festival circuit, especially with the arthouse crowd. As with many lyrical coming-of-age films (like All Dirt Road Taste of Salt, for example), Renoir rewards patience with fragmented narratives and surrealist touches. And it's fair to say not everyone will be able to get on its wavelength. The movie is calibrated to the volume of a whisper, as if Hayakawa is in a conspiratorial conversation with her own memories. Renoir's themes are deeply personal for the director, who, like the central character, grappled with the realities of a terminally ill parent. Working with her Plan 75 DP Hideho Urata, Hayakawa embraces a dreamy aesthetic that enhances the perspective of a child who is always looking. At one point in the film, Fuki stares at a man (Ayumu Nakajima) her mother, Utako (Hikari Ishida), has brought around and he jokingly asks if she finds his face interesting. And the answer is, well, yes, of course. Because Fuki is a curious child, the kind of 11-year-old people find peculiar because of the intensity of her gaze and the directness of her manner. We meet Fuki in a quietly harrowing opening sequence. She is watching a montage of crying infants on a VHS, which she quickly discards in her apartment complex's trash room. It's in that dark, musty area that she encounters a strange man with a gruff voice. He asks her invasive questions and Fuki, freaked out, runs. Later that evening, the man strangles her in bed and Fuki, through voiceover, considers her own death. It turns out that this is a short story she has written for a school assignment, a literary musing on grief and sadness. A few scenes after this, Fuki's teacher meets with her mother to ask if the young girl is alright. In many ways, Fuki isn't. She's surrounded by adult anxiety. Her father, Keiji (Lily Franky, a regular in Hirokazu Kore-eda's films), has cancer and her mother is buckling under the strain of caring for him. When he is hospitalized early in the film, Utako asks the hospital to assume long-term care duties. She is expecting he will die soon and accepting that reality comes with its own challenges. While her parents negotiate the emotional and financial weight of a looming death, Fuki tries to stave off loneliness and boredom through hobbies and friendships. She becomes close with Kuriko (Yuumi Kawai), a girl at her school with perfectly braided hair, and starts a suspect relationship with Kaoru (Ryota Bando), an older boy whom she meets by calling into a hotline for people seeking connections. Out of all these amusements, however, Fuki's obsession with magic and telepathy remains constant. Early in the film, the young girl watches an English-language show hosted by a kind of musician. He mostly guesses which card people have chosen from a deck, but he occasionally wills a pair of glasses to levitate with his mind. His primary instruction for those trying to tap into their psychic power is to concentrate. Fuki takes the directive seriously and spends most of the film conscripting those around her to take part. Kuriko is her most willing participant, and together the pair arrange rituals and try to read each other's minds. When Kuriko eventually moves away, it's a heartbreaking turn, leaving Fuki once again alone. Part of the reason Renoir, despite its modesty, hits emotionally is because of Suzuki's compelling performance. The newcomer has a wide-eyed, penetrating stare that at once communicates the reality of Fuki's innocence and the depth of her curiosity. In the actress' hands, the character becomes someone you come to feel deeply protective of. When Fuki decides to meet the young man she's been talking to on the telephone in real life, an anxious tension creeps into Renoir as you start to spiral about all the ways that interaction could go wrong. But thankfully Hayakawa cares about Fuki too, and so the character, despite her quirks and odd predilections, never gets into too much trouble. The director is interested, above all, in bringing the complications of Fuki's emotional life to the surface, a mission that the film largely accomplishes. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
South China Morning Post
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Cannes 2025: Renoir movie review – Plan 75's Chie Hayakawa considers amorality in Japan
4/5 stars Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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.
