Review: RENOIR

We know this film had its official premiere last year but it was only available on limited release and now it's out on DVD. What are you going to do? Read our review and decide if it's worth watching, that's what! Enjoy our review of 'RENOIR'.

By Denisse Ayala and Edgar Perez (Editors in chief).

This Gilles Bourdos directed film, based on his screenplay, tells us about the final days of renowned French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, played to perfection by experienced actor Michel Bouquet, who in Andrée Heuschling meets the model who would become his final muse at age 74. Andrée, played by Christa Theret, is a free-spirited, beautiful young woman who, in a way, inspired the master to create the last series of paintings in his life.

When Jean Renoir, one of the painter's sons, comes home after being wounded during WWI, he losses himself in Andrée's beauty and unique style and they begin a romance unlike any he had ever experienced before.

That's pretty much the main plot- a young couple in love, an old and sick painter trying to find ways to keep doing what he loves until he can't do it no more.

Analysis and opinion:

The film is a bit slow on some sequences, not all of them. For the most part it offers interesting bits thanks to some great work by its director who manages to advance multiple sub-plots at once, never losing control of the main one.

Bouquet and Theret's performances, as Renoir and Andrée respectively, are very good. You can sense they did the research on the characters they were portraying to do their jobs better.

The cinematography is gorgeous. For obvious reasons, the film had to be full of vivid colors, beautiful sunlight and with set-ups that inspired the audience--- it did so without a hitch. There are a couple of scenes where Andrée is posing for Renoir that project the film's tone and humor to perfection.

The editing is the film's one important flaw. As we mentioned before, the film loses momentum a few times, and although it manages to regain it, we felt it was a bit more times that we would've like to see.

Bottom-line- this is a good movie. It has all the necessary elements for the genre and shows us that Renoir was quite an interesting and charismatic fellow.