Pretty pictures in a movie are sometimes dismissed as eye candy, the implication being that empty calories are no substitute for the sound nutrition of noble stories and thematic depth. That may be, although it would be difficult to deny the chocolate-box allure of Renoir, a lushly photographed gloss on a real-life moment in an artistic family.
The title identifies the family; the moment is 1915. As war rages on the other side of France, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet), by now elderly and arthritic, paints at his sun-dappled estate on the Côte d’Azur. He employs a new model, Andrée (Christa Theret), a willful redhead who suits Renoir’s vision of glowing flesh and interior mystery.
Actually we have to take the mystery on faith, because Theret doesn’t suggest much beyond a handsome surface.