'Renoir' Review: Chie Hayakawa's Gentle Coming-of-Age Drama Explores Grief in 1980s Japan
By
David Ehrlich
Master baker tier. Every paragraph earns its place on the tray.
Summary
Chie Hayakawa's "Renoir" is a low-key coming-of-age drama set in 1980s Japan, following a young girl confronting her father's imminent death. The film, reviewed at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, takes a diaphanous and cuter approach to mortality compared to Hayakawa's debut "Plan 75," exploring how Japanese cultural attitudes toward terminal illness disclosure (historically documented in a 1982 study) shape the family's experience. The story is clouded by the burden of unbecoming as the protagonist navigates grief and growing up.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledAn 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.
The 'Plan 75' director follows her debut with a cuter but similarly morbid story about a girl confronting her father's imminent death in 1980s Japan.
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