‘Renoir’: An impressionistic portrait of grief and girlhood

Screened in the main competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Chie Hayakawa’s second feature, “Renoir,” is rather unlike her first, 2022’s “Plan 75,” which also premiered at Cannes and became a favorite on the festival circuit.

In contrast to the earlier film’s clear concept — the elderly are encouraged to sign up for state-sponsored euthanasia in a near-future Japan — the movingly impressionistic “Renoir” is a loosely plotted journey through the life and mind (including the vivid dreams) of an 11-year-old girl (talented newcomer Yui Suzuki) as her father succumbs to terminal cancer.

In scripting and directing “Renoir,” Hayakawa drew on memories of her own father’s death from cancer when she was her protagonist’s age and the film feels deeply rooted in the characters’ pasts and intensely alive to their present moment. One parallel is the 1993 Shinji Somai masterpiece “Moving,” which also features a strong-willed girl (Tomoko Tabata) dealing with a family crisis — in her case, her parents’ divorce.

Similar to Somai and Hirokazu Kore-eda, another master director famed for his work with young actors (see Suzu Hirose in his 2015 “Our Little Sister” for a pertinent example), Hayakawa draws out a performance from Suzuki that is true to her character’s stubbornly individual nature while feeling natural and unforced. And like Tabata, who later went on to a flourishing career, Suzuki is a riveting on-screen presence, even when her character, Fuki, is silently observing the adults around her with a hard-to-read expression and distanced air.

This attitude may impress as coldness, as if she hardly cares whether her father Keiji (Lily Franky), who looks frail and elderly, lives or dies. But the blank looks, we come to understand, are a sort of coping mechanism, as is Fuki’s interest in psychic and mystic powers, from mind reading to magic spells (with failures by her and others serving as moments of mild comic relief).

Although her mother, Utako (Hikari Ishida), is a busy career woman who seems to regard Keiji’s illness and Fuki’s presence as burdens, when we catch glimpses of earlier, happier times, we realize that Utako is not an ogre. Instead, she’s trying to function in the face of overwhelming stress and, as Ishida’s heartfelt performance reveals, deserves sympathy.

The story, which unfolds in the summer of 1987, when Japan’s bubble economy was at its height and digital distractions were nowhere to be found, is more a succession of incidents than a tightly woven narrative, but its development is not scattershot. Rather, its portrait of Fuki and her parents is cumulative in its power.

There is also an undeniable sadness and darkness to it: Fuki becomes close to a classmate — a tall girl who shares her fascination with the supernatural — but their friendship does not last. Utako, on company orders, joins a therapy group, but the understanding leader turns out to have ulterior motives. Keiji tries to maintain his ties to his company from his sick bed, but his colleagues view him as a man of the past.

“Renoir,” however, does not descend to miserabilist drama. Like an 1880 painting by the title artist — a portrait of a girl whose cheap reproduction becomes Fuki’s prized possession — it also glows with a youthful beauty and light. And we eventually see a smile from our protagonist that is not in a dream.

Death hurts, but her life continues — and hope endures.