Film also screens on Wednesday, October 22 | 1:30 PM | BB
In her elegant and thoughtful sophomore feature, Renoir, director Chie Hayakawa casts a glance backward to 1987 to tell the story of 11-year-old Fuki (fabulous newcomer Yui Suzuki). An introverted student with a vibrant internal life, Fuki has the usual stresses of a child her age, compounded by her hospital-bound father’s serious illness. Largely left to her own devices, she engages in a series of odd adventures in and around Tokyo. Hayakawa does a masterful job of eliciting character through action rather than dialogue, and the film is a subtle visual feast. Hayakawa made the film in order to return to her own childhood, when her father was dying, and his gift to her – a print of a Renoir painting – gives the film its appropriately poetic title.