a touch

Renoir is a touch of love on a canvas

By Jenny Alvarez

Set on the French Riviera in 1915, RENOIR follows Impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet), who is tormented by the loss of his wife, the pains of arthritis, and the news that his son Jean (Vincent Rottiers) has been wounded in action. When the incandescent Andrée, aka Dédé (newcomer Christa Théret,) miraculously enters his world, the artist is filled with an unexpected energy. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful Dédé will become Renoir’s last model inspiring some of his most renowned works including Les baigneuses (The Bathers). Back at the family home in Cagnes-sur-Mer to convalesce, Jean too falls under the spell of the new, redheaded star in the Renoir firmament. In their Mediterranean Eden, and in the face of his father’s fierce opposition, he falls in love with this wild, untamable spirit, and as he does so, within weak-willed, battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow.

This film has the complex relationship between father and son. Pierre-Auguste may be haunted by the loss of his younger wife and fearful of what might befall two of his sons serving during World War 1, but painting is still his life. Renoir includes his sense that wars shatter natural cross-border fraternities, the harshness of the class prejudices, the increasing disrespect for culture and also how his last muse was. This film is full of beautiful scenes of the countryside and some dialogues are plain but witty in some contents of Renoir’s canvasses into a visual blast of natural color and sound on the big screen full of romantic attentions in 111 minutes (A little long so you should be full of energy otherwise it could be very boring).