「なかなか11歳でこういう文章を書けること 言えないんです ただですね こういうタイトルなんですか『みなしごになってみたい』。」
“It’s not easy to write something like this at the age of 11, but the title is, ‘I’d like to be an orphan.'”

Tokyo suburb, 1987. Keiji (Lily Franky), the father of 11-year-old Fuki (Yui Suzuki), is battling an incurable illness and spending more and more time in the hospital. Her mother, Utako (Hikari Ishida), is constantly stressed by the care she must provide to Keiji while working full-time. Left alone with her overflowing imagination, Fuki is fascinated by telepathy and sinks deeper and deeper into her own imaginary world…

With Renoir (ルノワール), Chie Hayakawa expresses the natural emotional fluctuations of a young child and, through the interactions between the girl’s family and the people around her, raises the question of whether we can truly understand the pain of others.

Surrounded, but alone 

One of the themes often addressed in Japanese cinema is loneliness. In Renoir, each member of the central family is filled with feelings of fear, desolation, and irritation. But they don’t understand each other, are unable to talk to each other, and end up feeling extremely alone. And since comfort cannot be found within the family, each person seeks an external source of companionship.

The father, who is about to succumb to cancer, finds solace in medicines that the hospital does not offer him. And since death is near, he assumes that he might as well waste his money trying something since, in any case, he will no longer be there to spend it. His wife finds comfort in a support group that she is initially forced to attend. It is the group facilitator who will provide her with some comfort, despite him already being married. 

For Fuki, this comfort is first found in her imagination. We could describe her as somewhat whimsical, always imagining all sorts of things, which doesn’t seem to please the people around her very much. In 1980s Japan, let’s just say that wasn’t a very respectable character trait, even for an 11-year-old. These daydreams make the beginning of the film a bit difficult to follow, by the way. Let’s just say that for the first 30 minutes, you have to stay alert or you risk getting lost. But, a dreamy child sometimes also makes decisions that could be dangerous. And since Fuki often finds herself alone, without parents to look after her, she lets not only her imagination, but her need for affection lead her into risky situations. This is even more true when school ends and her only good friend moves to another city.

The way Hayakawa portrays the three family members offers the viewer a path into their own inner loneliness. No, we don’t end up crying for 120 minutes. But the viewing is accompanied by a kind of melancholy that reminds us of our own moments of solitude. Why does it resonate so much? 

“Now that I’m nearing the age of my parents when I was a growing child, I can vividly relate to the solitude the father must have felt, unable to open up his heart to his family, and the solitude the mother must have felt, suffering from her inability to control her emotions. I feel I’ve now gained the capacity to look sympathetically at my younger life haunted by anxiety and loneliness, and to illustrate with compassion our human imperfections and erratic behavior. “

Yes, we understand things differently as we get older and gain life experience.

Experiencing the approach of death as a child 

The main character of this work is a 5th-grade girl who regularly visits her hospitalized father and has various feelings towards him as he heads towards death. How do you react to this kind of slow death when you are a child?

Again, the director found her inspiration in her own childhood.

“In my youth, I couldn’t treat my father kindly while he was suffering from cancer. I sat beside him as he feared death and his body was consumed by pain, wondering what show I was going to watch that evening. When he was told how little time he had left to live, I imagined that people would be nice to me because I had lost my father. Even though he was at death’s door, I was absorbed in the fact of being the heroine of my own tragic play.”

Although this kind of behavior makes us want to resent the little girl, when we watch Hayakawa’s work, we can only understand that Fuki is ultimately just a child who does not understand all the implications of life. At 11, she cannot understand what is behind her father’s death. She cannot understand why her mother is getting so close to another man. She can’t even understand why she takes dangerous risks to meet a complete stranger. Solitude sometimes makes our decisions illogical, senseless. Again, the director finds the right tone to convey the feelings of her young heroine. A young actress who, by the way, is full of talent. Her performance is perfectly accurate.

A little more… 

Just as she did in the magnificent Plan 75, the director offers a touching, bittersweet work full of realism. She depicts tragic situations without falling into melodrama while giving great depth to her characters. She manages to give a truthfulness to all her characters, regardless of their age. 

As for the film’s title, it simply refers to a work that marks the young girl (Little Irene by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, a work that had marked the director herself in her youth). A lovely painting, by the way. 

Thus, with Renoir, Chie Hayakawa depicts a poetic and fascinating journey on resilience, the healing power of imagination and the difficulty for a traumatized family to connect.

Renoir will be screened at TIFF on September 6 and 11, 2025. 

Trailer