Review: A family braces for the worst, unsentimentally and with nuanced charm, in 'Renoir'

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Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa isn’t afraid to look death in the eye.The writer-director’s 2022 feature debut, “Plan 75,” imagined an unsettling future in which the elderly are offered a subsidy by the government to be euthanized.

For her follow-up, she travels into her own past, drawing from memories of her father’s battle with cancer.But while “Renoir” features no sci-fi elements, the nearness of oblivion remains just as prominent.Shorn of sentimentality, this gentle drama follows a quietly observant fifth-grader who feels the grim shadow of mortality all around her.

How the character will absorb that realization is anyone’s guess — including Hayakawa’s.Newcomer Yui Suzuki stars as Fuki, who lives in a nondescript Tokyo suburb in 1987.Her soft-spoken dad, Keiji (Lily Franky), is suffering with terminal cancer in its final stages, the emaciated man spending as much time in the hospital as he does at home.

Fuki’s mother, Utako (Hikari Ishida), doesn’t seem very despondent, though: One senses an emotional exhaustion that comes from preparing so long for the inevitable that she’s now mostly numb, her anticipatory grief having given way to frayed nerves.Movies If you want big popcorn fare from the best directors in the blockbuster game (Spielberg, Nolan, Ridley Scott), it’s here, along with a number of promising indie swings.Fuki’s pre-mourning process is equally complicated.

Outwardly, she shows no signs of being devastated by her dad’s imminent passing, happily playing with him, almost in denial of his fate.But “Renoir” subtly suggests the impressionable girl is more aware than she lets on, surrounding her with random reminders of death.

Local news breathlessly reports on random domestic murders.Even when Fuki gets away from the city, the camera lingers on her watching a campfire’s dying embers.

The film derives its title from the girl�...