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A Reel Life film section

Issue: Spring 2013

Renoir (2012) movie review

Life Drawing

Renoir is a sensitive character study about the dying of one artist and the birth of the career of another.

Set on the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, Jean Renoir -- son of the Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste -- returns home to convalesce after being wounded in World War I. Renoir senior is wracked with pain. His life is supported by a group of women who tend him from bathing him and treating his arthritic hands to feeding him, putting him to bed, and carrying him through the grounds to his studio.

Movie poster, Renoir, Festivale film review; 220x299

Movie poster, Renoir

The film begins with the arrival of the beautiful young Andrée Heuschling who wishes to model for Renoir, and to be an actress, a dancer, a performer of some kind. She inspires the ageing painter to create his final paintings. Meanwhile young Jean Renoir is also struggling against infirmity. As he heals he becomes involved with Andrée who encourages his interesting in moving pictures and sees a promise from him that he will make pictures and she will act in them.

The two men, one at the end of his life and career, and the other at the tenuous beginning of his, enjoy their red-headed muse in the beautiful countryside that has such death and destruction outside its walls.

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by Ali Kayn
Australian release 24 October, 2013
For credits and official site details, see below
Search Festivale for more work by the film-makers below.

See it at Cinema Nova

Just the facts:

Title: Renoir (2012)
Written by: Gilles Bourdos (scr), based on work by Jacques Renoir & Michel Spinosa & Jérôme Tonnerre
Directed by: Gilles Bourdos
Running time: 111 mins
Rating:


The Players: Michel Bouquet, Christa Theret, Vincent Rottiers


Official website:
IMDb entry


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