Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18738 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-11-27
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Style trumps substance in Renaissance, a 2006 French film whose breathtaking visuals largely overcome its shortcomings in the areas of story and character development. Detailed in a lengthy and absorbing "making of" featurette, the film's look is a combination of CG animation, motion capture, and a palette consisting solely of black & white (there are a few splashes of color late in the proceedings, but no gray whatsoever). And while it has a few obvious antecedents (the filmmakers readily acknowledge the influence of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, not to mention the much earlier, Expressionist work of Fritz Lang and Orson Welles), Renaissance, with its commingling of heavily processed live action and graphic novel sensibilities, looks very little like anything you've ever seen before. The setting is Paris in the year 2054, and it is here that director Christian Volckman and his crew do their best work.

The French capital is certainly recognisable (the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre's Sacre Coeur are two familiar landmarks), but its classic architecture is glazed with all manner of futuristic touches, from vast glass penthouses to layers of transparent walkways outside Notre Dame Cathedral; and with the preponderance of the action taking place at night, frequently in the rain, the City of Light more often suggests a very literal representation of film noir. As for the story, it's nothing special. Hard-nosed police Captain Barthélémy Karas (voiced in this English version by Daniel Craig) is searching for a female scientist who works for Avalon, one of those sinister mega-corporations that seem to run everything in movies like this; seems the woman, who has been kidnapped, possesses what's referred to as "the protocol for immortality," and Avalon, which promises good health, beauty, and long life for all, desperately wants her back. The characters are a bit stiff (physically and otherwise), the dialogue is occasionally stilted, and the film is sometimes so dark that it's hard to tell what's going on. But most of Renaissance looks so amazing that such deficiencies can easily be ignored, at least the first time through. --Sam Graham

Synopsis
Set in mid 21st century Paris, RENAISSANCE sees the brilliant young researcher Ilona Tassueiv kidnapped. Her employers at the gargantuan multinational company Avalon call for hostage retrieval specialist Officer Bartholomew Karas to take charge of the case. Karas digs deep into the Parisian underbelly to find information about the kidnapping. However, things are not as they seem and Karas is forced to question the motives of everyone. The animated film noir has a distinctive and highly impressive visual style. The live action footage has been digitally rendered, leading to an exceptional level of realism. With a similar look to SIN CITY, RENAISSANCE succeeds in making the Paris of 2054 look a dark and menacing place--perfectly suiting the film noir style of the production--and creating an animated film that looks a lot like a live action film.

Customer Reviews

Motion captured black and white graphic masterpiece.
This film noir filmed in black and white (absolutely no grey scales) and shot in motion captured CGI is something of a graphic masterpiece. An original story it has all the qualities of a well loved black and white graphic novel brought to life, far surpassing anything else I have ever seen.

Set in Paris in 2054 the artists have created an extraordinary future cityscape incorporating well known features of the city, the three dimensional complexity of these architectural creations has to be seen to be believed.

The stark black and white motion captured images of the characters seem to draw one into the story, where a cop Barthelemy Karas (Daniel Craig) is trying to trace missing Ilona Tasuiev (Romola Garai) a brilliant scientist working for the sinister Avalon Corporation, with intermittent help from her neurotic sister Bislane Tasuiev (Laura Blanc).

I found it difficult to follow the plot until I became accustomed to the pure black and white graphics, in fact a second viewing is mandatory.

In the first class "making of feature" we learn this film will be a one off, a great pity as it is a refreshing new experience.

confused, intrigued, enlightened
Saw this at a small cinema in London, it was never widely released (you wouldnt find it at cineworld!)and rightly so, if your a techie into graphics then you must get this, the animation and cinematography are fantastic. The plot if sumwhat confusing, set in Paris in the future jumps around like a tarantino film, if youve got time to watch it then watch it, this not a film where you can go out of the room and come back in again to carry on it requires concentration! Great character voices from Daniel Craig, Catherine McCormack and the much understated Kevork Malikyan. A stunning exercise in high-tech filmmaking. Buy it

Style over substance
All of the other reviews of this film have valid points. The animation, in pure artistic terms, is very impressive. The trouble is, it really doesn't help to tell the story.

I found the animation style aggravated the already difficult task of trying to follow who was who, and what they were doing. Upon considerable reflection I think there was an interesting story buried in here somewhere, but the film makes it far to difficult to bother with and in the end became a film that was on the whole quite boring.

There has been some comparison with Sin City. The only real comparison is that both are tying to be literal translations of comic style to film, but I personally think that Sin City was fantastic and that this is a very average movie.