TIFF 2025: ‘Renoir’ | ‘Little Lorraine’
Chie Hayakawa’s latest film has the same kind of quietly affecting tone that her directorial debut, Plan 75, treaded in to great effect. With Renoir, though, Hayakawa’s coming-of-age drama meanders between characters and gets slightly lost in the malaise. With splendent visuals and memorable encounters, there’s a sturdy foundation to Hayakawa’s exploration of grief, but its muted approach—and mostly silent protagonist—leaves a film that aches within more than it evokes.
With a nostalgic lens towards the 1980s, Renoir focuses on 11-year-old Fuki (played by Yui Suzuki in a stellar debut) as she grows up in 1987 Tokyo—the same time when writer-director Hayakawa was that age. A fractured family surrounds Fuki, represented by her terminally ill father (Lily Franky) and overworked mother (Hikari Ishida), who rarely share the screen together as Fuki creeps into adolescence. Instead, Fuki turns to her curiosity to help guide her through a tumultuous transition in any child’s life. As her imagination leads to hijinks involving hypnosis and calling strangers, she becomes acutely aware of the pain harboured by the many strangers she encounters, leaving an indelible mark on her future.
Renoir has a very sturdy central performance, keeping it afloat—and float is the best word for this, as Hayakawa’s screenplay drifts between interactions and lets characters blossom through brief, repeated exchanges. However, it’s Suzuki’s performance that reveals layers of complex emotions beneath the childlike wonder. A mostly silent character, Fuki is the undeniable heartbeat of a film that depends on her so much for moments to pop. They occasionally do, but its languid pacing and fluctuations between extreme emotions dull the impact and place too much on a subdued performance. Renoir has its quiet moments of devastation, but they’re all too brief and distant—leaving a well-made film with an underwhelming impression in its wake.
The 50th Toronto International Film Festival takes place between September 4th and 14th. Renoir celebrated its North American premiere on September 6th, as part of TIFF’s Centrepiece program. The full list of films selected for the festival can be found here.
Sometimes a film piques my interest solely because of the personal ties I have with either its subject matter or location. Little Lorraine is definitely one of those titles. While I’ve lived all over Canada, I have always called Nova Scotia home. Whenever I visit the Maritimes, I feel most reminded of the beauty this country has and the impact that capitalism has had on small towns like the titular village of Little Lorraine. Unfortunately, while Andy Hines’ feature directorial debut successfully captures the allure of a small town, it also gets too bogged down in a generic crime drama that cares little about its characters and more about delivering twists and turns that are eclipsed by a hokey screenplay.
Based on the song “Lighthouse in Little Lorraine” by Adam Baldwin (who shares screenwriting credit with Hines), Little Lorraine is not too dissimilar of an adaptation from ripped-from-the-headline movies where the screenplay rests on the incredulous moments of the source material. In this case, it’s the story of miners who suddenly become unemployed when a fire breaks out in one of the mines. The town’s mining operations have slowed to a crawl, but the explosion causes a wave of unemployment and a fear for the financial futures of some residents. Little Lorraine fixates on one of those workers, Jimmy (Stephen Amell), who becomes unknowingly embroiled in a cocaine smuggling ring when his uncle Huey (Stephen McHattie) returns to Little Lorraine with a boat and what initially seems to be an honest job offer. Needless to say, everything escalates from there.
If you’ve seen the music video for “Lighthouse in Little Lorraine,” you’ve seen the better version of this story. It makes sense that Hines—a Grammy-nominated music video director—would try his hand at fleshing out a music video for his feature-length debut. Unfortunately, everything added to the film is either unintentionally hilarious (Colombian musician J Balvin’s live-action film debut here is rough, to say the least) or weirdly incongruous with the tone of the film (comedic actors Rhys Darby and Matt Walsh are in this, but both feel completely miscast or just unenthused). Little Lorraine has flashes of interesting ideas that have been explored in Canadian media enough times already—I recommend CBC’s Still Standing to see a myriad of small towns whose residents come together to overcome struggles—but the film is never more interesting than its source material and can’t justify the adaptation.
The 50th Toronto International Film Festival takes place between September 4th and 14th. Little Lorraine celebrated its World premiere on September 5th, as part of TIFF’s Discovery program. The full list of films selected for the festival can be found here.
