Cannes Review: Chie Hayakawa’s Renoir is a Gradually Rewarding Coming-of-Age Story

Just three years since earning a special mention from the Camera d’Or jury for Plan 75, Chie Hayakawa returns to Cannes as one of seven filmmakers debuting in the main competition––an uncharacteristic breath of fresh air from a festival known for sticking with the old guard. In Plan 75, an acidic work of speculative fiction, […] The post Cannes Review: Chie Hayakawa’s Renoir is a Gradually Rewarding Coming-of-Age Story first appeared on The Film Stage.

May 18, 2025 - 21:35

Cannes Review: Chie Hayakawa’s Renoir is a Gradually Rewarding Coming-of-Age Story

Just three years since earning a special mention from the Camera d’Or jury for Plan 75, Chie Hayakawa returns to Cannes as one of seven filmmakers debuting in the main competition––an uncharacteristic breath of fresh air from a festival known for sticking with the old guard. In Plan 75, an acidic work of speculative fiction, Hayakawa imagined a near-future timeline where Japan decided to see to its aging-population crisis by introducing a voluntary euthanasia program. Hayakawa approaches adjacent themes in her sophomore feature, Renoir, a film about family, death, and intergenerational friction that looks not to the future but the director’s own past.

With all its quotidian detail (shot in gorgeous, faded colors by DP Hideho Urata), the appearance of veteran actor Lily Franky, and glacial pace, Renoir is a coming-of-age story that will be familiar to fans of Hirokazu Kore-eda, but there’s little (if any) of his sentimentality here. Hayakawa’s gaze is as consistent as it is observant, presenting the joys and perils of a formative summer in equal light. The story follows Fuki (Yui Suzuki), an introverted 11-year-old doing her best to feel through adolescence. Her father (Franky) is stuck in a hospital bed with cancer while her mother, Utako (Hikari Ishida), stresses over work. Often left to her own devices, Fuki retreats into her imagination and takes an interest in hypnosis, which she practices on a woman upstairs and a new friend from her language school. The film is set in 1987, during Japan’s economic bubble, and reflects some of Hayakawa’s own experience of losing her father at a similar age.

The result is a rich and gradually rewarding bildungsroman, a film that can be cold to the touch but leaves much to unpack. In a recent interview with Variety, Hayakawa admitted to having written some version of the script in her 20s but fearing it would be too dark. This should be taken with a good dash of salt: even in moments of levity, Renoir‘s mood remains precarious. That it opens with Fuki imagining her own murder (a grizzly strangulation in the 11-year-old’s own bed) and funeral for what turns out to be an essay she is reading to class probably says all you need to know about the film’s timbre.

Fuki isn’t prone to talking; Hayakawa instead has her listen to adults, leaving you to fret over whose influence she will eventually take to heart. There is the kindly teacher who praises her writing even as he worries about some of the subject matter (at one point bringing her mother for a meeting over an essay titled “I Want to Be an Orphan”). There is the handsome man (Ayumu Nakajima) who joins her and Utako for dinner, and upon whom Fuki attempts to place a curse. And, most worryingly of all, there is Kaori (Ryota Bando), a groomer who she talks to on a phone-in dating line and convinces her to meet with him in the most hair-raising scene.

The late-80s setting, coming just before a bubble burst, places Renoir at a pivotal time in Japanese history, but Hayakawa’s is a film of interior worlds, some of which can feel inaccessible. I sense this and a slightly one-note tone will alienate some viewers, but it’s captivating to watch the director slowly pry such memories open.

Renoir premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

The post Cannes Review: Chie Hayakawa’s Renoir is a Gradually Rewarding Coming-of-Age Story first appeared on The Film Stage.