Delicate, Tokyo-Set Meditation on 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.

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.