Noir Renoir Films

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...

  Michelangelo Antonioni – L’Avventura (1960) An Exploration of the Mind’s Quiet Spaces “Michelangelo always went beyond words to meet the silence, the mystery, and the power of silence.” —Enrica Antonioni A boat glides slowly toward the shore of a rocky island. One by one, the passengers step onto land. A quarrel between a man and a woman. Sunbathing. The wind picks up... From the very beginning, L’Avventura unfolds as something more than a narrative—it’s a landscape of mood, silence, and ambiguity. I was struck by Aldo Scavarda’s cinematography. He floods the screen with one breathtaking composition after another: jagged cliffs, dark rainclouds drifting across distant skies, and starkly deliberate frames. There is a plot, yes—someone from the group goes missing. But this is no mystery film in the traditional sense. Antonioni gave audiences this premise over sixty years ago: a boating trip, a missing woman. What happened? A Story of Unresolved Emotions L’Avventura ...

Martin Scorsese – Bringing Out The Dead (1999) New York. Lights. Neon lights. Flashing ads. Skyscrapers. Blocks, some better, some worse. An ambulance. Wet asphalt reflecting the neon glow and Van Morrison’s T.B. Sheets…     “The night started out with a bang! A gunshot to the chest. Drug deal gone bad.” Paul Schrader is once again in his element as screenwriter in Bringing Out the Dead, based on Joe Connelly’s novel and directed by Martin Scorsese. The film is a depiction of the often hellish everyday life of paramedics, and what it takes to endure it. Joe Connelly, who wrote the book, spent nine years working in the EMS in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. Both Scorsese and Cage spent time on actual paramedic calls in NYC as part of their preparation for the film. Nicolas Cage’s character, Frank, has problems—or rather, they all do (the paramedics). Frank is haunted by inner ghosts, former patients—especially the ones who didn’t make it—who begin to manifest in his daily life....

  Poetic Realism in French Cinema INTRODUCTION Two men walk along a dimly lit peninsula. They talk quietly. The air is misty. The sea is barely visible in the background, and further in the distance, a house emerges from the haze. There is something otherworldly, picturesque, and poetic in the atmosphere. This brief description is from the 1938 film Le Quai des brumes ( Port of Shadows ), directed by Marcel Carné. This film is where it all began—my fascination with the style of French cinema that emerged in the mid-1930s, later known as poetic realism . The term itself originates more from literary realism than from cinema. Typically, the protagonists are working-class people, fugitives, criminals, or those living on the fringes of society. Love, its loss, and the presence or nearness of death are ever-present themes. The cynicism and pessimism of poetic realism reflect the past while foreshadowing the future: the rise of fascism, the impact of the Great Depression, and the ons...

Russ Meyer – Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) What would American cinema be without a provocateur like Russ Meyer? The word “provocateur” here is meant as nothing less than a tribute to the man’s long, idiosyncratic career and unmistakable taste. Nicknamed The King of Nudies , Meyer directed over thirty films ranging from feature-length productions to shorts, even dabbling in documentary. Films like Lorna , Beyond the Valley of the Dolls , Vixen , and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! have long since achieved cult status—and rightfully so. Vixen (1968), for instance, was only the second film in the U.S. to receive an X-rating that year. It was even banned in the state of Ohio. The first X-rated film of 1968 was The Girl on a Motorcycle , starring Marianne Faithfull and Alain Delon. “I think it’s regrettable that people are denied the freedom of viewing and enjoying as others enjoy the freedom of worship.” – Russ Meyer Say what you will about Meyer’s films—they are, at the very...

Jean-Jacques Beineix – Betty Blue (37°2 le matin, 1986) THE BURNING EDGE OF LOVE Sometimes, emotion is hard to explain. Betty Blue is that kind of emotion. It’s not just a feeling — it’s the full force of feeling, pushed to its very limits. An intense love story. A beautiful, destructive story. Filled with sensual charge and magnetic allure, but above all, it's one of the most piercing portrayals of love ever put to film. The late American critic Roger Ebert once wrote in his review of Betty Blue that “love is not the same thing as nudity.” While I understand the provocative edge of his comment, it’s important to say this: the essence of Betty Blue lies far beyond its nudity or its sex scenes — though they, too, are vital to the film. After all, this is a story about a man and a woman bound together in an all-consuming, volatile relationship. "I had known Betty for a week. We make love every night. The forecast was for storms." — Zorg Zorg lives a quiet, solita...

  Liliana Cavani – The Night Porter (1974) I wondered what I could write about two people who are “strangers” to each other, yet share a common past. An ugly and horrific past. One was subordinate. The other held power. What are the odds that they would meet again—and would they even recognize each other? One way or another, in Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter , they meet again. A man and a woman. Lucia, a former concentration camp prisoner, and Max, the former camp commandant. The film feels like a long, dark dream in its weightlessness— a feverish delirium trying desperately to change its nature. I couldn't help but think of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle , though in this case, there are only two protagonists. When their eyes meet at the reception desk of Hotel Zur Oper, flashbacks from the past begin to rise slowly to the surface. After the initial shock and what follows, one begins to contemplate the dynamic between Lucia and Max. They become increasingly entangled ...

  The Taste of Things (2023) "God created water, but man created wine." The Taste of Things ( La passion de Dodin Bouffant ) – how does one make a film about food? When meals are prepared in the kitchen with reverence and a gentle smile, you know you're getting closer to the answer — and to the essentials of life, or perhaps even more. No, this is not a film featuring an angsty teenager hurling microwave dinners against the wall shouting, "This shit tastes like crap, and I can't be arsed to eat it!" Nor do we see a wide-eyed, screaming reality-TV chef, as tediously scripted into many fictional movies and shows. No. This writer longs for le beau élégance . And that’s exactly what’s on offer here. The Taste of Things is set in the rural French countryside of the 1890s, where passionate culinary artists Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) and Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) create their dishes with utter devotion — every pinch, every stir, every bite made with ca...

  Light Light Light (2023) THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF YOUTH – AND ITS WEIGHT Haruki Murakami once wrote in Norwegian Wood : "No wisdom can heal sorrow. That kind of sorrow is beyond wisdom, honesty, strength, or kindness. We can only grieve it to the end and learn something from it..." A small village somewhere in Finland. The year is 1986, and Chernobyl looms in the background. There is Mariia, and Mariia’s family. Then Mimi arrives in town — with her own family. Due to a misunderstanding, Mariia and Mimi become friends. The film is based on Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen’s award-winning young adult novel of the same name, which won the Finlandia Junior Prize in 2011. Coming-of-age stories in cinema have always fascinated me. Films like Tapio Suominen’s Täältä Tullaan, Elämä (1980), Larry Clark’s stark Kids (1995) and Ken Park (2002), or, more recently, Jonah Hill’s empathetic debut Mid90s all come to mind. A similarly empathetic approach is taken here by director Inari Ni...

  OUR FRIEND (2019) A man sits by the bedside. A woman lies in the bed, unseen. There is a conversation. A decision to be made. Who should be the one to tell? Starring Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, and Jason Segel, Our Friend (2019) is a drama that tells the unvarnished story of the Teague family, in which Matthew Teague’s (Casey Affleck) wife Nicole (Dakota Johnson) is diagnosed with cancer. Daily life takes a sudden turn, everything changes — but surprisingly, a source of steadfast help and calm in the chaos arrives in the form of Dane Faucheux (Jason Segel), a mutual friend of the couple. The film is based on Matthew Teague’s powerful and brutally honest essay “The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word” , published in Esquire in 2015, one year after Nicole’s death. The title refers to Dane Faucheux, who left behind his hometown, job, friends, and girlfriend to be there for the family. The essay itself is more raw and detailed than the film, and understandably so. It earned...

  Bernardo Bertolucci – Last Tango in Paris (1972) “Fucking God!” A train clatters across a bridge. A man holds his hands over his ears and shouts. He starts walking. He seems both anguished and sorrowful. A young woman, wearing a hat adorned with two flowers, passes him. She notices him, but keeps walking. Jeanne (Maria Schneider) rents an apartment in an old hotel. It turns out the previous tenant, Paul (Marlon Brando), is still living there. The apartment is nearly empty. A broken cabinet here, an object draped in fabric there. They get to know each other, Jeanne and Paul. They talk, they have sex. Paul wanders, gliding through doors as if searching for something within his sorrow, lost in his drifting thoughts. This — their meeting place — is a vacant room and a mattress. An improvised space, a stage. No names, no past. What is the price of loss and the pent-up feelings that follow — anger, grief, or love? Sex. Madness. Obsession. They talk, tell stories, argue. “You...