20/05/2025 - CANNES 2025: The Japanese director shares her thoughts about art, life and death, and describes how her movie parallels her own life journey

(© Fabrizio de Gennaro/Cineuropa)

Although Renoir [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Chie Hayakawa
film profile], playing in competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, contains a distinct reference to the work of the feted French painter, the main character in this Japanese film is 11-year-old Fuki. In suburban Tokyo in 1987, we follow her during a life-defining summer, dealing with her father’s battle with cancer right in the middle of a childhood destined to be cut short. Director Chie Hayakawa shared her thoughts about art, life and, not least, death.

Cineuropa: Some similarities between yourself and the main character have already been hinted at in the film’s presentation. The main character is 11 in the film, which takes place in 1987. How old were you yourself in 1987?
Chie Hayakawa: Eleven. And when I was writing the screenplay, the Fuki character shared about 70%-80% of myself, or what I think was myself projected. Once I’d met with Yui Suzuki, my main actress, her own personality started reflecting in the character. So, I feel it ended up as something like 50-50. What I brought from myself, or at least tried to, was the myriad emotions I was experiencing that I was not able to put into words back then. But as so much time has passed, I’m able to have some perspective now. What happened? Why was I feeling this? And now I want to try to express this, through cinema.

You still had to go and explain some of these myriad feelings to… an 11-year-old actress. How was that process?
Well, Yui is very intuitive. She doesn’t seek explanations. I asked her to read through the script once, but then not look at it again and not try to analyse it. Then I just asked her to perform it, as she felt it. The background, feelings, what kind of life she leads – nothing had to be explained, because Yui didn’t need it, I felt.

The title, Renoir, is quite magnificent. Was this title in place early on, or did it emerge as the project progressed?
It was there almost at the beginning. It’s a story about a young girl in 1980s Japan. And with a title named after a great French painter from the turn of the last century, I thought I would be creating an interesting gap. From the beginning, I wanted a title that wouldn’t carry a significant meaning that correlates to the story. And now that the film is made and I’ve been able to share it, I’ve been getting an interesting reaction: the movie is full of small episodes – just like impressionist paintings. Small dots gather on a canvas, and then, when you take a step back, there’s the full picture. It’s like the episodes in the film that won’t immediately seem related, but in the end, you see that they are. This reflection, of course, only made the connection to the title greater.

There’s at least one other form of artistic expression in the film that seems significant, again beginning with an “R” – “Rydeen”, one of the big 1980s hit songs by Yellow Magic Orchestra, YMO, which Fuki and her young friends dance to at summer camp. The song could almost be an anthem for 1980s Japan, with its techno pop sounds, so very energetic, futuristic and optimistic.
It's very significant. The first half of the 1980s in Japan was indeed very optimistic towards the future – it was a technological wonder, but one that was kind of floating in a bubble. Everyone was convinced that it was just going to get better, but then the economy started struggling, and people got worried about the future. It went the opposite way. That YMO song really embodies that era. And, by the way, that’s one of the parts that come straight from my own life because I, too, danced to that song at summer camp!

Although quite different in look and feel, your first two films both deal with the theme of death, with the first one, Plan 75 [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Chie Hayakawa
film profile], focusing on euthanasia.
Yes, someone pointed out the connection at one point, which I hadn’t reflected on myself but then started thinking about. And when I did think about it, I realised that my father had battled cancer for ten years, so between the ages of about ten and 20, I had been living under the same roof as someone who was always confronting inevitable death. I think it had a profound effect on me – the hospital and its smells, the people in the cancer ward, all of them battling serious conditions, and their families who were there. That has stayed with me. So, a trilogy may happen one day.