Renaissance
Directed by Christian Volckman
Black and white and noir all over, Renaissance is an uninspired amalgamation of forms. It intends to garner the blockbuster appeal of a gritty futuristic action adventure, with a look that resembles A Scanner Darkly filtered through the monochromatic design of Sin City. I’m an admirer of both films, but not solely for their graphic bells and whistles; one draws from comic book savant Frank Miller’s understanding of the well-worn hardboiled detective yarn, while the other sternly rebukes the country’s war on drugs. Renaissance has no such muscle. Featuring imagery seemingly produced by an antique television set with a busted contrast dial, it’s a bleak construction that’s at worst incoherent and at best mildly entertaining.
The plotting is equally arid, with a load of contrivances that end up like a rapid scan of bite-sized capsules from a sci-fi movie guidebook: In 2054, Paris has sealed itself off from the rest of the world and constructed sleek skyscrapers atop its ancient gothic architecture. The dominating corporate powerhouse is an enigmatic beauty service named Avalon (incidentally, the city’s seediness resembles New York’s like-named church-turned-nightclub). There isn’t much more to it than that; whereas Terry Gilliam’s Brazil brilliantly imagined an upcoming society hinged on maintaining eternal youth, Renaissance never really engages the imagined technology from a philosophical perspective.
Instead, there’s some vague idea about attaining immortality that makes these dour future dwellers engage in heated controversy. A young Avalon scientist involved in the eternal youth research is kidnapped on a shadowy night (which, by the way, looks just like the film’s shadowy days), and badass Parisian cop Barthelemy (voiced by Daniel Craig) is called upon to track her down. Violence ensues in the form of a few decent shootouts, but it’s nothing that hasn’t already been surpassed by Minority Report. The bad guys unload their ammo as they run around in shimmering invisibility suits stolen from the Predator films, while Barthelemy responds with fast-paced offensive finesse that plays out like a lifeless Die Hard. With that obvious precedent in mind, I almost wished he’d get it over with and belt out: “Yipee ki-yay, motherfucker!” But no such luck—his character is too boring for Bruce Willis theatrics. Unfortunately for Craig, this doesn’t give him any solid defense against the naysayers opposed to his upcoming role as James Bond.
The animation comes from the same motion capture school as Polar Express and Monster House, but it ends up looking like the discarded negatives from those gorgeous films, with all the details sucked out. Anything bright is pure white, which is unkind to sensitive eyes, and darker hues end up completely black, so the entire film is one long shadow with occasional strobe-like interruptions. A lot of the urban muckiness recalls Blade Runner, but actually owes more to videogames than cinema. Rock Star’s excellent Max Payne series have much more compelling stories; Renaissance feels like watching a gamer who can’t figure out the controls.
Director Christian Volckman, who introduced the film at the screening I attended, seems like a pretty sharp guy. I imagine he was bogged down by an obsession with the technological wizardry—which just doesn’t cut it anymore. There are hints throughout that Volckman understands the rhythms of big-screen drama, and I’d like to see him apply it somewhere other than a dry tribute to his influences. The effort to preserve such contrivances reigns over the specifics of the story. Given that Renaissance makes obvious references to preexisting material, it could have used a dose of humor to help establish its winking acknowledgements. But it insists on running through every play in the book as fast as possible. “It’s too dangerous!” one character cries. “That’s never stopped you before,” comes the retort. But, for once, you actually wish it did.
