Film Picks: In Chie Hayakawa’s moving drama Renoir, an 11-year-old girl is forced to grow up fast
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Yui Suzuki in Renoir by Japanese film-maker Chie Hayakawa.
PHOTO: LOADED FILMS
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Renoir (PG13)
122 minutes, opens exclusively at GV Funan on Oct 9
★★★★☆
Japanese writer-director Chie Hayakawa’s debut work, the dystopian fantasy Plan 75 (2022), won a clutch of awards and marked her as a storyteller who could seamlessly blend the social with the psychological. Renoir – in the running for the Palme d’Or at 2025’s Cannes Film Festival in May – is, in contrast, a deeply personal story rooted in Hayakawa’s childhood and the death of her father.
It follows 11-year-old Fuki (Yui Suzuki), whose mother Utako (Hikari Ishida) is struggling with work and caring for a terminally ill husband, Keiji (veteran actor-comedian Lily Franky). The tween is forced to raise herself.
Her child’s mind has to process gender roles – especially the talent husbands have for making their wives miserable – and death. But this is no tearjerker. Fuki is vibrantly alive, watching everything and trying to crack the code of adult behaviour.
Hayakawa’s film is a moving tribute to childhood innocence, buoyed by Suzuki’s magnetic performance as the curious but introspective child reckoning with emotions and people she is not yet equipped to handle.
Japanese Film Festival Singapore 2025
Masaki Okada plays Makoto Himuro, the suave con man who helps a tax officer in Angry Squad: The Civil Servant And The Seven Swindlers.
PHOTO: 2024 ANGRY SQUAD FILM PARTNERS
This edition of the film festival, which runs until Oct 12, features a mix of classics and new movies never previously released in Singapore.
One highlight is the drama-comedy Angry Squad: The Civil Servant And The Seven Swindlers (2024, PG13, 121 minutes, screens at GV Suntec City, Oct 9, 7pm), a movie from Shinichiro Ueda, the film-maker who delivered the cult zombie favourite One Cut Of The Dead (2017).
This heist story sees meek tax officer Jiro Kumaza (Seiyo Uchino) become a mastermind as he enlists a crew of con artists, led by the suave Makoto Himuro (Masaki Okada). Together, they must take down a billionaire property tycoon who has evaded paying taxes.
Tax returns might be dull, but Angry Squad is not, according to The Japan Times, which says the film’s running time “breezes by – the movie has a lot of heart, and pulls off exactly what it set out to achieve”.
Where: Golden Village Suntec City, Oldham Theatre, Japan Creative Centre jff.sg/2025
MRT: Promenade/Fort Canning/Orchard
When: Until Oct 12, various timings
Admission: $16 (for screenings at GV Suntec) and $10 (for Oldham Theatre), with discounts for Friends of Japan Creative Centre and the Singapore Film Society
Info:
Drop (PG13)
95 minutes, available on HBO Max from Oct 17 and HBO from Oct 18, 9pm
★★★★☆
Meghann Fahy (left) and Brandon Sklenar in the 2025 mystery thriller Drop.
PHOTO: HBO MAX
In this taut thriller, a first date is transformed into a nightmare. Violet (Meghann Fahy) is a widowed single mother nervously entering the dating scene.
At a fancy restaurant, she meets her date Henry (Brandon Sklenar) and both take a liking to each other. But things take a sinister turn when she begins receiving messages on her phone from someone who threatens to harm her son and sister unless she follows his instructions. The twist: The messages seem to be coming from inside the restaurant.
Set mainly in one location – the restaurant – Drop follows Violet as she complies with the kidnapper’s instructions, even as she and Henry plot to unmask the villain lurking nearby.
Director Christopher Landon, maker of fun conceptual horror thrillers (Happy Death Day, 2017; Freaky, 2020), delivers an engaging mystery that makes clever use of technology, cranking up its annoyances into something much more horrifying.
