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I just watched a beautiful French movie! I mean beautiful in the most literal of senses: Renoir is an exquisitely shot film of beautiful people in lovely countryside, as if the filmmakers tried to make the movie look as much like a Renoir painting as possible. It reminds me of Bright Star, which also seems infused with light; only the light in Renoir is more golden, more late afternoon, perhaps reflecting Renoir's advancing age.
I was briefly concerned that the film was going to tell the tale of the aged Renoir's seduction of his model, the nubile young Dedee. But in fact the romance is between Dedee and Renoir's son Jean, who is home on convalescent leave from the trenches. (Yes, Jean Renoir, whose 1937 The Grand Illusion is one of the classics of the French World War I film genre, is now a main character in a biopic set in France during World War I. It's kind of glorious.)
Jean and his crutches are as close as the film gets to the trenches. The golden glow of the late afternoon makes Renoir's bucolic estate seem ageless and timeless, but it slowly grows clear that the world has changed and will change more: Renoir and his garden are beautiful relicts.
It's a film about the end of an era, but not a tragedy, not least because of Renoir's earthy good humor. As his health slowly fails, he descends into occasional grouchiness but not despair. Renoir painted until the day he died - literally; he painted his final still life the morning of his death. It's a meditative film, a film about the fading of a life well-lived.
I was briefly concerned that the film was going to tell the tale of the aged Renoir's seduction of his model, the nubile young Dedee. But in fact the romance is between Dedee and Renoir's son Jean, who is home on convalescent leave from the trenches. (Yes, Jean Renoir, whose 1937 The Grand Illusion is one of the classics of the French World War I film genre, is now a main character in a biopic set in France during World War I. It's kind of glorious.)
Jean and his crutches are as close as the film gets to the trenches. The golden glow of the late afternoon makes Renoir's bucolic estate seem ageless and timeless, but it slowly grows clear that the world has changed and will change more: Renoir and his garden are beautiful relicts.
It's a film about the end of an era, but not a tragedy, not least because of Renoir's earthy good humor. As his health slowly fails, he descends into occasional grouchiness but not despair. Renoir painted until the day he died - literally; he painted his final still life the morning of his death. It's a meditative film, a film about the fading of a life well-lived.
