DVD Review: Renaissance

Despite having some familiar elements, Christian Volckman's Renaissance is unlike anything I had seen before. Animated using motion capture technology, the film is a future noir set in Paris in the year 2054, and it's distinct for being in black and white with pretty much no shades of grey. Such stark contrast makes for some interesting and often beautiful images, though the film's style does seem to be motivated by its own novelty. It looks the way it does simply for the sake of looking the way it does, and unfortunately, the film's plot comes across as an obviously secondary concern.

The key to enjoying Renaissance, then, is to appreciate it for its blatant stylistic novelty and to give it some time. I nodded off after the first twenty minutes because the film is initially difficult to follow. It isn't that the story is too complicated, but it starts off with no helpful exposition, and that combined with the fresh but unfamiliar style makes it easy to feel lost. Once you get used to the visuals, though, it is easy to become engrossed in the convoluted kidnapping plot and fascinated by the filmmakers' creative, futurist intentions.

The kidnap victim is a young woman named Ilona (voiced in the English-language dub by Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights star Romola Garai), a researcher at a huge cosmetics corporation called Avalon. Assigned to find her is Barthelemy Karas (Casino Royale's 007, Daniel Craig), a police detective established as your basic hard-boiled action movie cop – in his first scene he ignores his superior, puts a hostage in danger, and, of course, still saves the day. While on the case of Ilona's disappearance, Karas falls for the woman's sister (28 Weeks Later's Catherine McCormack), he chases suspects through the city, becomes led on by red herrings, learns of a conspiracy within Avalon and in a peak plot point shows that he isn't always that infallible cop he's introduced as.

Renaissance isn't as predictable as it sounds, though. And its plot is certainly the first I can think of that deals with the disease progeria, at least as a basis for mad science involving genetic engineering. It turns out that Ilona has been researching a cure for the disease, and she's been kidnapped because someone somehow got the crazy idea that such a cure could lead to a formula for immortality. What is harder to believe, though, is that immortality is treated as so obviously a bad idea by the film's good guys, explained so simply as negative because it makes life meaningless. Comic strips have displayed deeper philosophical reasoning.

The film's story doesn't necessarily need to be told in the future or even as science fiction, but it does feature some terrific concepts that are, again, only employed for the sake of their employment. The best of these is a team of soldiers armed with invisibility suits – unnecessary, sure, but cool looking. The design of the near future Paris is also stunning and completely believable, with plausibly updated landmarks and cars designed specifically for the film by French automakers Citroen. The attention to detail and futurism allows for one of the finest animated car chases ever.

Some of the film doesn't look so good, and this mostly has to do with its lack of depth. It makes sense that someone would do an animated noir film in all black and white, but without a gradient scale, everything looks flat. At times, the beautifully drawn set pieces suffer because of this flatness. Throughout much of the film, even moments I thought worked just fine, I wondered what the world of Renaissance would look like in color. There's good reason why Robert Rodriquez and Frank Miller allowed for gradient and some color in their adaptation of the mostly stark Sin City graphic novel. It looked clearer and had just enough reality infused into it. Of course, Renaissance is more an animated film than Sin City, and isn't supposed to look realistic. It's supposed to look like something we haven't seen before.

Miramax's new Region 1 DVD of the French-British-Luxembourgish co-production includes only one bonus feature, but it is an appropriate and informative making of documentary. Details include all you'd want to know, such as the project's history, conceptual drawings and motion capture/rotoscoping techniques. The filmmakers also point out where and why their project is an innovation in computer animation. Surprisingly, they even admit to some of their reasons for making the film, which actually include the intention to just make a film that looks like this.