Yearly Archives: 2013

“Free the Mind”: Life-changing research in our own backyard

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“Free the Mind” opens Wednesday at Sundance Cinemas in Madison. Not rated, 1:31, three stars out of four. There will be post-show Q&As featuring the filmmaker, several of the film’s subjects, and other experts after the 7 p.m. shows on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

I know I shouldn’t judge a movie by its title, but hearing about a documentary called “Free the Mind” made me assume this would be one of those hippy-dippy films preaching about the mystical powers of positive thinking, like “What the Bleep Do We Know?” or “I Am.”

How refreshing it is that Danish documentary filmmaker Phie Ambo’s film, largely made in Madison, is so grounded and even utilitarian in its approach to the human brain. There’s some trippy visual effects intended to illustrate the activity of the brain, to be sure. But most of the film looks at the very practical applications of the meditation research done by Dr. Richard Davidson at the UW’s Center for Investigating Healthy Minds.

Davidson’s groundbreaking research (my interview with him this week is here) indicates that, just as trauma and other external experiences can shape the way we think, there are positive influences such as meditation that can rewire our brains in a more healthy direction. Ambo looks at two groups the Center is working with to put these theories into practice.

The first is preschoolers, especially one little boy who suffers from rage and fear issues, possibly a result of a life spent in foster care. The other are Iraq War vets suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. One, Rich Low, is haunted by the faces of the fellow soldiers who he couldn’t save while at war.

Another, Stephen Lee, is a former military intelligence officer who vividly describes the harsh interrogation tactics he used on people. “In order to do my job, I had to become a horrible person,” Lee said. “And I was good at it.” Ambo’s film gets about as close as I’ve ever seen to capturing the torment of PTSD sufferers; Low and Lee allow her intimate access into their daily lives.

The techniques that researchers use aren’t any sort of hocus-pocus, just a mix of meditation, breathing exercises and other methods. One thing I learned from the film is that there are hundreds of different kinds of meditations, and the trick is matching the right meditation with the individual. By the end of the sessions, the veterans’ anxiety levels have dropped and they’re sleeping much better.

There are some clunky stylistic touches in “Free the Mind,” such as an overbearing score that seems needlessly intrusive at times; when Davidson appears on Michael Feldman’s “Whad’Ya Know?” the music seems ominous for some reason. (Come on, it can’t be that bad.) But this is overall a compassionate and curious film about the real-world implications of some fascinating research happening right in our backyard, helping our own neighbors.

Instant Gratification: “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and four other good movies to watch on Netflix right now

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It’s a common complaint for Netflix Instant users — it’s just too hard to find something good to watch. So, every Tuesday, the Instant Gratification column features five good movies recently added to Netflix Instant. If you come across any winners that you’d like to share with other readers, let me know in comments below.

Pick of the week: “Y Tu Mama Tambien“ — This Mexican road movie from Alfonso Cuaron (who went on to make “Children of Men” and this year’s “Gravity”) launched the careers of Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. It’s a sexy, funny and unexpectedly poignant film about two horny young men on a road trip with a mysterious older woman. What they learn about Mexico — and themselves — on the trip is quietly unforgettable.

Drama of the week: “The Kid With a Bike” — The latest film from the Dardennes Brothers just wrecked me, as an 11-year-old boy largely abandoned by his father is taken in by a good-hearted hairdresser. Without sentimentality or melodrama, the film beautifully shows the effect of a quiet, sustained act of kindness on a troubled child.

Horror movie of the week: “Dead Snow” — Two words: Nazi zombies. On a ski trip to Norway, some teens run into the remnants of Hitler’s undead corps, with gory results. Not the greatest, but good if you’re looking for some late-night splatter. The film was directed by Tommy Wirkola, who went on to do that “Hansel & Gretel” movie.

Documentary of the week: “Brooklyn Castle” — This inspiring documentary in the tradition of “Spellbound” looks at an inner-city Brooklyn school that’s home to the best junior-high chess club in the country. In addition to dealing with triumphs and heartbreaks on the board, they have to deal with severe school budget cuts that might cripple their program.

Crazy movie of the week: “Antichrist“ — I panned Lars Von Trier’s out-there psychological horror movie when it played in theaters, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it. A psychiatrist takes his grieving wife into a cabin in the woods to work on her, with disastrous, bloody, and borderline ridiculous results.

“West of Memphis”: A strange kind of justice

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“West of Memphis” is now playing at Sundance Cinemas. R, 2:26, three stars out of four.

While watching “West of Memphis,” I kept thinking about another documentary about the criminal justice system I saw recently, one that probably won’t get as much attention as “Memphis” and its notorious case. “Gideon’s Army,” which played at the Wisconsin Film Festival last month and will be on HBO in July, looks at three overburdened public defenders in Southern courts. It depicted a criminal justice engine that was designed to elicit guilty pleas out of defendants, particularly poor defendants, whether they are actually guilty or not.

Because that’s pretty much how the historic “West Memphis 3” case ended, a shocking miscarriage of justice in Arkansas in which three teenagers were railroaded into being convicted of the murders of three 8-year-old boys in 1992. The case has now been the subject of four documentaries, and the teens (now in their late 30s, having spent 18 years in prison) had celebrities like Eddie Vedder, Natalie Maines and “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson fighting on their behalf. But at heart, right to its troubling end, it’s another case where, instead of a prosecution having to prove a case, a defendant has to choose the lesser of two evils. “This happens all the time,” defendant Damien Echols says of the whole process, and he’s right.

The three “Paradise Lost” documentaries aired on HBO covered the twists and turns of the case as they happened, but now Amy Berg’s fascinating and maddening “West of Memphis” gets to look back on the entire arc of the case. Berg is no disinterested observer in the case (Echols serves as producer, as did Jackson, who bankrolled an investigation to clear the three defendants’ names). But largely, Berg lets the evidence tell the story, meticulously examining what might have happened on that night when three boys went missing, only to turn up dead in a river the next morning, bound and bludgeoned. (Berg includes some horrifying crime scene photos as she sifts through the evidence, so this film is not for the faint of heart.)

From the start, the investigation by local police reeked of incompetence; mistaking post-modem wounds by swamp turtles as some sort of ritual mutilation, the police jumped on the idea that this was some sort of Satanic murder, and focused on Nichols and the other two because of what they wore, what they listened to  and what they wrote in their notebooks. It’s shocking how seemingly important players in the case were simply never interviewed by police, so sure they were of their theory. But with some misleading “experts” and a jailhouse informant willing to testify on behalf of the state for a lesser sentence, convictions were secured.

But advocates continue to fight the case, and DNA evidence points squarely at the stepfather of one of the boys, who had a history of abuse. If this were a TV show, the real killer would confess in dramatic fashion. But this is real life, and he walks free. Instead, largely to save face after such an embarrassing miscarriage of justice, a complicated plea agreement is worked out that allows the three defendants to claim innocence while still entering a guilty plea.

Again, just get a guilty plea on the books. This happens all the time.

“The Great Gatsby”: It’s a shame about Jay

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“The Great Gatsby” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema, Sundance and Cinema Cafe. PG-13, 2:28, two stars out of four.

“I like large parties,” Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki) gushes in “The Great Gatsby.” “They’re so intimate.”

That seeming contradiction may be the closest thing Baz Luhrmann finds to a mission statement in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prose for his adaptation of the quintessential Jazz Age novel. Luhrmann revels in throwing cinematic parties on the big screen, gaudy senses-pounding affairs that leave you little room to breathe. But he’s also genuinely sincere in wanting to get the intimate heart of the novel on screen, in Jay Gatsby’s doomed attempt to remake himself and preserve the past.

Luhrmann’s done it before — “Romeo + Juliet” was a feature-length music video that stayed surprisingly true to its source material, while “Moulin Rouge” amped up kitsch to operatic proportions. But he struggles honorably but mightily here to connect his film’s glitzy first half with its darker second half. I suspect there will be people who buy the Blu-ray, only to turn it off midway through every time, just as the last strand of confetti hits the floor.

Narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) gets swept up the din of the Roaring ’20s — the “golden roar” of Wall Street money, the wild parties, the constant throb of hip-hop music. Wait, what? Yes, as most probably know, Luhrmann and executive producer Jay-Z have fused period music to hip-hop, dubstep and pop on the soundtrack, to best translate the orgiastic glee of the era to modern audiences, and to best sell that soundtrack. After “Moulin Rouge” and “Marie Antoinette,” it feels a little old hat, really, and one can’t help but how a film with its tone rooted in African-American culture keeps its black characters in the margins, brief flashes of musicians and dancers and servants who exist only to entertain the rich white characters. That’s true of the lily-white book and the segregated times, of course, but still, there’s something deeply distasteful about watching all the black people in the film grin and grind and cheerfully let their culture be appropriated by the swells.

Luhrmann shoots in 3D, and his camera is restless and relentless, zipping back and forth across the bay between the old-money types of East Egg and the new strivers of West Egg, then through the sooty wasteland to New York City and back again. Tom (Joel Edgerton) and Daisy (Carey Mulligan) are East Eggers, born so rich they never hard to worry about developing character. Over on the West Egg, Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) throws outrageous parties but is rarely seen. (His appearance a half-hour into the film, his confident grin lit by fireworks and Gershwin, is a doozy.)

Gatsby befriends his befuddled neighbor Nick, but there’s an agenda at work; he loved Daisy in a previous life, and hopes to not just win her back, but erase the five years they spent apart. Di Caprio is not just good in “The Great Gatsby,” he’s necessary; once he finally appears, his charismatic presence finally holds Luhrmann’s manic camera still. It’s funny that Fitzgerald included Nick as the surrogate for the reader, because in this version it’s really Gatsby we understand and empathize with, his hopeful illusions leading him to his downfall, his cool facade slipping away to reveal the desperate, uncomprehending man-boy underneath.

But in transforming from bacchanalia to costume drama, Luhrmann gets tripped up, losing the head of steam he’s built up along the way. He can’t think of anything to do with Jay and Daisy and Nick and Tom other than to have them in rooms talking to each other, and the shift in tone is deathly. Which is not to say individual scenes don’t work; the final hotel room confrontation, with Tom and Gatsby parrying over drinks while Daisy vacillates, is a masterful piece of acting and staging all around. But it comes from another, more conventional literary adaptation, and for better or for worse, Luhrmann has already bet his chips on not making that adaptation.

What’s playing in Madison movie theaters, May 10-16, 2013

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So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past — in 3D!

The big release this weekend is Baz Luhrmann’s glitzy 3D version of “The Great Gatsby,” which came pre-trashed for a lot of critics. It’s also the last weekend for a lot of film series on campus, so there are options in case you don’t want to see Daisy Buchanan coming right at you!

All week

“The Great Gatsby” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema, Sundance, Cinema Cafe) — It’s hard to think of a more unlikely summer movie than this all-star adaptation. I highly enjoyed both Luhrmann’s “Romeo and Juliet” and “Moulin Rouge,” but is he chasing the glamour of “The Jazz Age” at the expense of the tragedy?

“Peeples” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema) — Tyler Perry put his stamp on this domestic dramedy, although he isn’t more than a producer for this film about a suitor (Keith Robinson) stuck with his uptight future in-laws on vacation. But it’s getting a little better reception from critics than Perry’s usual fare.

“Koch” (Sundance) — My full review is here. Not the Wisconsin Film Festival hit “Citizen Koch,” this documentary is about Ed Koch, the combative former New York mayor who embodied both the strengths and the flaws of his city.

“West of Memphis” (Sundance) — The latest and most extensive documentary to look into the case of the West Memphis 3, three Arkansas teenagers railroaded into a conviction for a supposedly “Satanic” murder. This installment focuses on DNA evidence that strongly pointed to another suspect.

Friday

“Gimme Shelter” (6:30 p.m.,  Union South) — The death of the ’60s can be charted in this gritty tour documentary, which follows the Rolling Stones to their disastrous Altamont show. Free!

“Max Et Al Ferrailleurs” (7 p.m., UW Cinematheque) — In Claude Sautet’s largely neglected 1971 crime masterpiece, a bored detective lures a gang into committing a big bank robbery. Free!

“Trainspotting” (8:30 p.m., Union South) — Danny Boyle’s exuberant and raw 1996 film about a bunch of cheery lowlifes in Edinburgh. Free!

“Django Unchained” (11 p.m., Union South) — Tarantino’s best since “Jackie Brown,” this intense and funny mash-up of spaghetti Western and blaxploitation uses its genre influences to make a surprisingly direct and powerful indictment of the legacy of racism in America. Free!

Saturday

“Django Unchained” (5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., Union South) — See Friday listing

Communication Arts Showcase (7 p.m., UW Cinematheque) — A showcase of the work done by this semester’s Comm Arts students. Free!

“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (midnight, Union South)  — The eminently quotable 1974 riff on the Arthurian legend, with killer rabbits, horny nuns, and rude Frenchmen is a comedy classic. Free!

Sunday

“Howl’s Moving Castle” (2 p.m., Chazen Museum of Art) — Cinematheque at the Chazen’s immensely popular series on Studio Ghibli concludes with Hayao Miyazaki’s wonderful animated film, in which a teenager is trapped in a magician’s walking castle and must find the spell to set her free. Free (the movie, that is), but these have almost all sold out, so get there early.

“Billy Elliot” (3 p.m., Union South) — You’ve seen the musical at Overture Hall, now enjoy the original movie, with Jamie Bell as a Welsh boy who yearns to put down the boxing gloves and pick up the unitard and join the ballet. Free!

Wednesday

“Free the Mind” (all day, Sundance) — In honor of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Madison, Sundance is screening this documentary about Dr. Richard J. Davidson of the UW, and his research into the power of meditation. The film also plays all day Thursday.

“Blazing Saddles” – (1:40 and 7 p.m., Sundance) — The Sundance Classics series features Mel Brooks’ zany Western classic, with Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder.

Thursday

“Star Trek Into Darkness”  (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema, Sundance, Cinema Cafe) — J.J. Abrams’ second film in the rebooted franchise gets an early jump on the weekend, with Benedict Cumberbatch reportedly Khan-level good as the bad guy.

“Koch”: A tale of two mayors

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“Koch” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 1:40, three stars out of four.

Ed Koch, the recently deceased mayor of New York City, was a man of contradictions so obvious that he must have secretly reveled in them. He was an arrogant man who famously asked everybody “How’m I doing?”, a man who could be generous and gregarious with crowds but petty and arrogant at the one-on-one level. Even at the end of his life, his politics were tricky — supporting of same-sex marriage, opponent of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.”

Forget “A Tale of Two Cities:” — the documentary “Koch” is a tale of two mayors. At least two.

Neil Barsky’s first film does an entertaining job capturing the many facets of Ed Koch — or at least as many as Koch has ever been willing to reveal to the world. Barsky keeps the focus almost exclusively on Koch’s three terms as mayor in the 1980s, how his tenure both revived the strengths of the city he loved as well as exposed its flaws.

When he took office in 1978, Koch was handed a city on the brink of financial ruin. With a strange combination of fervent social liberalism and brutal fiscal conservatism, he slashed budgets, alienated some constituencies (especially African-Americans) while forging alliances with others. He also launched major rebuilding projects — the New York we see today is in many ways his vision, from the newly sanitized and corporatized Times Square to the gentrified Lower East Side.

Koch was never one to shy away from a camera, and Barsky has a wealth of archival footage to choose from — Koch on a street corner, parrying merrily with his citizens, or on television news, sharply dressing down an interviewer. Interviews with former staffers, political rivals and journalists who covered Koch offer context to his decisions — some masterful, some disastrous. Even those who opposed him seem to regard him with a kind of wonder.

But if “Koch” offers context, it never really offers explanation for what made him tick, what drove him. The closest Barsky gets is a quote from Koch on how a bigger-than-life city needed a bigger-than-life mayor. So was it all an act by a savvy career politician? If so, it was a remarkably consistent one, continued long after the cameras had turned away. Barsky also touches on the long-standing rumors that Koch was a closeted gay man, but handles it discreetly (and Koch shuts down the questioning with a “It’s none of their f—— business.”

Barsky intercuts the archival Koch with present-day footage of the former mayor, stumping for local candidates, going to fundraisers, arguing politics with family members at Yom Kippur, an elder statesman who seems ill at ease on the sidelines. Mellowing with age did not seem to be an option. Barsky takes us inside Koch’s apartment, and it’s a surprisingly spare place, the walls covered in photos and outsized caricatures of Koch.

What he truly saw in those portraits we’ll never know, but “Koch” is an engaging film about what New Yorkers saw in them. Had Koch lived to see it (he died this spring just a week before it opened in New York City), I think he would have found much to like and much to complain about. But he would have enjoyed the complaining, too.

Blimey! It’s the Union South British Invasion Film Series, guv’na!

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First off, I just want to apologize to every British person everywhere for that headline. But I couldn’t help but go a little overboard with the news that the Union South Marquee Theatre will finish out the semester with a free British Invasion series of films running Wednesday through Sunday.

All screenings take place at the Marquee, 1208 W. Dayton Ave., and are free. Visit union.wisc.edu/film for more details.

“The Italian Job” (7 p.m. Wednesday) — Not he Mark Wahlberg remake, but the swingin’ 60s classic heist film, with Michael Caine leading an eccentric team and three Mini Coopers on a caper to shut down traffic in Torino and steal some gold.

“Tommy” (6:45 p.m. Thursday) — The Who’s phantasmagorical 1975 musical about the kid who plays a mean pinball, featuring an all-star cast of ’70s rockers.

“Gimme Shelter” (6:30 p.m. Friday) — The landmark tour documentary follows the Rolling Stones on tour in the late ’60s, up to the notorious Altamont concert where a fan was stabbed to death by a Hell’s Angels member working as a security guard.

“Trainspotting” (8:30 p.m. Friday) — Danny Boyle’s breakthrough film about some likable heroin addicts in Edinburgh.

“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (midnight Friday) — Shall I quote this movie verbatim for you? The British comedy troupe’s hilarious take on the King Arthur legend had that kind of effect on generations of comedy nerds.

“Billy Elliot” (3 p.m. Sunday) — Amid the turmoil of a coal miners’ strike, a young Welsh boy pursues his dream of becoming a ballet dancer.

Instant Gratification: “John Dies at the End” and four other good movies to watch on Netflix

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Every Tuesday, Instant Gratification brings you five good options for movies to watch on Netflix Instant or other streaming services.

Netflix giveth, and Netflix taketh away. Last week, we were complaining that Netflix was removing hundreds of movies from its streaming library because of rights issues. Well, according to InstantWatcher.com, they just added hundreds of new ones, mostly older titles. Granted, some of them are forgettable-looking titles like “Dagmar’s Hot Pants, Inc.,” but there are some gems to be found.

Pick of the week: “John Dies at the End” — This may be Don Coscarelli’s loopiest film ever, and he’s the guy who made “Bubba Ho-Tep,” about a geriatric Elvis battling an ancient mummy. Here, two slackers have to stop a new drug nicknamed Soy Sauce which promises its users time-space hopping powers — but at a price.

Musical of the week: “Lagaan” — The best Bollywood movies mash all kinds of genres into one epic, and that’s certainly true of this four-hour 2001 epic, in which a small town rallies for a crucial cricket match against an arrogant British commander’s team. Seriously, this movie makes cricket seem exciting.

Comedy of the week: “Broadway Danny Rose” — After last week’s “Manhattan,” my black-and-white Woody Allen kick continues with this lovable 1984 film about a talent agent who can’t let go of his untalented clients.

Classic of the week: “Chinatown” — Roman Polanski’s landmark ode to L.A. noir takes the conventions of the private-eye genre and adds an extra layer of cynicism to the mix.

Drama of the week: “Diamond Men” — The great Robert Forster plays an aging diamond salesman who must train his cocky replacement (Donnie Wahlberg). The two men form an unexpected bond, and hatch an unexpected plan.

“Iron Man 3,” and why all superhero movies should visit rural Tennessee

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Note: This article contains spoilers. Don’t read it if you haven’t seen “Iron Man 3,” especially since the film has more surprises than your average superhero movie.

The first half-hour or so of “Iron Man 3” is fine. Certainly better than the sloppy “Iron Man 2,” but just fine. It’s familiar in its set-ups, giving us backstory, the introduction of a cut-and-dried villain in The Mandarin, the start of a dramatic arc for Tony Stark in his post-“Avengers” anxiety attacks. When Tony’s seaside home is destroyed, it’s the typical summer movie end-of-Act-I visual effects sequence that we expect to see in a modern blockbuster.

It’s fine. At that point I thought “Iron Man 3” was going to be a decent but unnecessary third installment

And then director and co-writer Shane Black throws the first big switchback of the film, and lets us know “Iron Man 3” is going to be a little different than what we expect from superhero movies. For example, big-budget action movies all take place in major cities, right? Batman cruises Gotham, and The Avengers fought the aliens in the heart of Manhattan because — it’s Manhattan.

Welcome to Rose Hill, Tennessee.

Following a lead, Tony Stark crash-lands in the small town, where he spends the next half-hour of the movie, his suit useless (that shot of him dragging it behind him in the show, like a kid with his sled, is classic), his defenses down. The only costume he has is a plaid vest and a camo cap.

And it’s awesome. It’s exactly what this movie, and what most superhero movies need — some grounding. After the spectacle of the first act, it takes some confidence in a filmmaker to pull back like that when the conventional wisdom is to keep piling spectacle on top of spectacle. But he doesn’t.

Instead, the Tennessee section focuses on humor — the scene with Adam Pally of “Happy Endings” as a superfan (“A Hispanic Scott Baio?” — a callback to “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” maybe?) is a riot, and the back-and-forth with the kid who takes him in is great.

It’s great because it’s funny, but also because the kid is not just some cute tyke, but in many ways a young Tony Stark. Note how he describes his parents: “My mom just left for the diner, and my dad went out for scratchers. He must have won, because it’s been six years.” The way that line is written and delivered is classic Tony Stark, right? Sardonic humor masking pain. Stark immediately recognizes a kindred spirit (similar to his affectionate teasing of Bruce Banner in “The Avengers”) and responds in affably caustic style. It’s a strong relationship — despite the joke, they really are “connected.”

That’s the other value of the Tennessee section, focusing on character. Without the distractions of his usual toys, we really get to see Stark up close, out of his usual franchise cocoon, interacting with strangers, whether it’s the kid or the grieving mom at the bar. How do you make a movie about a man in an invincible suit interesting? Take him out of the suit, and leave him out for as long as possible. (That’s what helps make that one action scene in Rose Hill so effective — out of the suit, Stark seems unusually vulnerable.) And Black knows to ease him slowly back into the suit — even when he goes to Miami, he’s got a bunch of jury-rigged gadgets, and has to fight a big battle with only an Iron Man glove and one boot. It’s smart filmmaking — rather than make the villains bigger and bigger, make the hero smaller.

Which brings me to the third important part of the Tennessee section — it alerts the audience not to rely too comfortably on its expectations, paving the way for the surprisingly fun third-act reveals. (Ah, Trevor, we can’t help but love you!) As a result, the third act for me is a lot more fun than the first, with unexpectedly funny lines (“Seriously, I just work here. These people are so weird!”) and plot turns I never saw coming. Because plot turns aren’t supposed to be part of superhero movies. You set up the hero, you set up the villain, and you send them into epic battle. Black gets there, with that oil rig battle at the end (back to the familiar) but the path he takes is much more idiosyncratic and satisfying. Because it goes through a small town in Tennessee.

“Renoir”: Colored perceptions between father and son

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“Renoir” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:51, three stars out of four

If only Pierre-Auguste Renoir had the colors at his disposal that director Gilles Bourdos has in making a movie about him. The French drama, set at Renoir’s country estate on the French Riviera, practically vibrates with beautiful colors, mostly bright oranges intertwining with deep greens. One shot, in which the famous Impressionist painter dips a dirty brush in a clear glass of water, and the vermillion paint swirls like flames inside the glass, is so gorgeous you almost have to look away.

It’s that eye-popping surface that is the real star of “Renoir,” although the film is an agreeable if shallow look at the great artist in the twilight of his years. At 74, Renoir (Michel Bouquet) is confined to a wheelchair; he could probably still walk, but it would take a lot of effort, and that effort he wants to pour into his last paintings. Renoir is prone to grand pronouncements about the nature of art, such as the prettiness of his paintings (“There are enough disagreeable things in life. I don’t need to create more.”) but beneath that crusty facade is a man with a purely carnal streak, obsessed with the glow and texture of a woman’s skin. His household is full of former models, who became maids as they aged, and it’s understood that Renoir knew more than one of them in an artistic sense.

The latest model to come to him is Andree (Christa Theret), a beautiful and tempestuous young woman who inspires him on the canvas and in his heart. The film lingers on scenes of Renoir painting her, and the process is quite fascinating to watch, as he draws quick brushstroke curves on the canvas, seeming to will them to converge into the natural curves of the human form.

Then Renoir gets another visitor, his middle son Jean (Vincent Rottiers). Jean is on leave after being injured in World War I, and yearns to be back with his comrades on the front lines. Cinephiles will know that Jean someday becomes a great film director (“Rules of the Game,” which just played at UW Cinematheque a couple of weeks ago). But there’s not really much more than a hint of that in “Renoir,” other than the dreamy look Jean gets on his face when he sees a silent film projected on the wall.

Jean and Andree fall for each other, of course, and I found their whole romance kind of trite, especially when they tussle about whether he should go back to the war. Pierre-Auguste is by far the most interesting Renoir of the bunch, and “Renoir” is much better in those quiet, lovely scenes of him painting, his crinkled eyes observing, the occasional pronouncement croaking forth from somewhere deep beyond that majestic beard. Bouquet makes him an imposing figure, but finds a twinkling humor beneath his fearsomeness.

When his doctor asks him what he’ll do when his hands are too old and shaky to paint with, Renoir responds flatly, “I’ll paint with my dick.” Which, the film suggests, he always has.