Renoir

1987, a suburb of Tokyo. Fuki is eleven. Her father Keiji is bedridden with a terminal illness; her mother Utako works full time as well as caring for him and is permanently strained. Fuki is left to herself. She becomes fascinated by telepathy, tells invented stories, and goes further into a world of her own. Chie Hayakawa writes and directs. Yui Suzuki plays Fuki, Lily Franky the father and Hikari Ishida the mother, with Ayumu Nakajima in the cast. It is Hayakawa's second feature; she was known for Plan 75. The narrative rests largely on her own childhood, when her father was ill. The subject is loneliness rather than grief. Fuki is inside the family and nobody attends to her; the narrative does not build that as an accusation, and the mother is exhausted too. The child's view is deliberately uncomfortable. Fuki meets death, sexuality and the lies of adults with the same curiosity, and the film does not make her endearing. It had its world premiere in competition at the 78th Cannes film festival. The narrative is episodic and uneventful; the scenes are laid side by side across a summer and no dramatic structure is built. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet Japanese drama and films told from a child's view. Who it is not for: the pace is very slow, little happens, and the ending offers no clear resolution.