Noir Renoir Films

Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue – The Multidimensionality of Loss and the Inner World    A family drives down the highway. A child watches the lights reflecting in the rear window. A dirt road, mist. A boy tosses a kendama by the roadside. Suddenly — a crash. What is loss? It is final.  In this essay, I examine Blue , the first film in Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy. I focus on the film’s thematic core: loss and the violently shifting emotional landscapes it creates—those places where words fail, collapse, and disintegrate. I also reflect on the film’s rhythm and visual language as part of a broader thematic whole. In addition, I reference certain key elements that contribute significantly to the film’s structure and meaning. In the opening scenes of Blue , Kieslowski employs a deliberately fragmentary visual style: labored breathing, blurred focus, and extreme close-ups—of a hand, of an eye reflecting the doctor’s face. This fragmentation mi...

The Assessment (2024)     When a film presents two worlds—an old one and a new one—it inevitably brings to mind George Orwell, and why not Aldous Huxley as well? The Assessment (2024) is not, however, an Orwellian dystopia, although it certainly is a dystopian portrayal—one that is multi-layered, sharp, and refreshing. Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) are a couple living in the controlled reality of the new world, and they wish to adopt a child. The setup seems fine—at least, on the surface. Technology has certainly taken the upper hand over the old world. The foreboding begins when the official Virginia (Alicia Vikander) arrives to assess the couple’s suitability as parents. The tone of the film is tense, at times unsettling, with Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch's brilliant film score subtly floating in the background, enhancing the atmosphere of instability. The visual quality is impressive and polished, and the casting is spot on. Above all, Alicia Vikander’s p...

  Thelma (2017), dir. Joachim Trier The Norwegian film Thelma , directed by Joachim Trier and co-written with Eskil Vogt, is nearly flawless in every aspect. It succeeds where many others in its genre falter. First and foremost, the film plunges into the subconscious with such force that I found myself reaching for a few volumes of Jung from my bookshelf. Thelma (Eili Harboe) moves away from her parents’ home in a small town to study biology in Oslo. She befriends a few fellow students, but one in particular, Anja (Kaya Wilkins), catches her attention. As Thelma begins experiencing epileptic seizures and ominous black birds hurl themselves at windows, things take a strange and gripping turn. When the friendship between the girls becomes something deeper, Thelma’s rigid Christian upbringing can’t handle it without resistance. Although the film’s thematic thread is fairly clear—essentially a coming-of-age story—Trier layers it with family drama, tragedy, and the paranormal. One ca...

  Whenever I'm Alone with You (2023, France) by Guillaume Campanacci & Vesper Egon The film opens with a warning: “If you want to watch a romantic comedy, I’m sorry.” Moments later, a woman sits in a bathtub wearing delicate lace lingerie, and the film lays out a few more... conditions. Is this a strange film? Perhaps. The typographic “play” at the beginning immediately brought to mind Godard—and the influence of 1960s Nouvelle Vague aesthetics doesn’t stop there. As in nearly every film, we have a man. His name is Guillaume. And as in nearly every film, we have a woman. Her name is Tatiana. She’s the one in the tub—into which Guillaume eventually jumps as well. The scene, accompanied by music, works beautifully. Then we move on to another moment, where a voiceover introduces Tatiana. So the film begins after a few scenes… or perhaps it only feels like it begins after a few scenes. Either way, it does begin—but… Since the film doesn’t rely on traditional cinematic...

  Ingmar Bergman - The Silence (1963) A train. Two women. A boy appears in the frame, rubbing his sleepy eyes. One of the women coughs painfully, appearing to be ill. Later, the boy looks out of the train window and sees the silhouettes of armored vehicles speeding by as the train moves. For me, one of the most significant films by Bergman is The Silence ( 1963 ). The film tells the story of the estranged and strained relationship between two sisters, Ester and Anna. Eventually, they arrive in a small town called Timoka. The Silence is one of Ingmar Bergman's films with the least dialogue—only about 34-38 lines in total. Later, Bergman remarked that if he had been more alert and logical, there would have been only 7-8 lines in the entire film. The film works exceptionally well even as it is and would have succeeded just as brilliantly with only those few lines. It is also the final part of Bergman’s so-called Faith Trilogy. The other two films in the trilogy are Through a Gla...

Louis Malle – The Fire Within (1963) A Man at the Edge of the End A woman and a man lie in bed. They smoke. They talk. They move to the bathroom. The man has to leave soon. They talk. The woman continues: "You need a woman who won’t let you out of her sight. Otherwise, you’ll get depressed and act foolishly." Louis Malle’s The Fire Within ( Le Feu Follet ), based on the novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, follows Alain Leroy—a once-celebrated socialite and partygoer, now broken and isolated. Having checked himself into an alcoholism treatment clinic, he is finally discharged after four months. Freedom awaits—though he hardly welcomes it. Right away, it’s worth pointing out how sharp and perceptive the screenplay is. I assume La Rochelle contributed to it, because the film is packed with cutting, darkly poetic one-liners. The dialogue oscillates between stark, cynical observations and confessions dipped in self-loathing. "It’s not feelings of anxiety, doctor. It...