Renaissance (2006)

Renaissance (2006)

aka Paris 2054: Renaissance

Dir. Christian Volckman

Dir. Volckman's first feature-length film is a stylised mystery/thriller set in a futuristic Paris, the majority of which is rendered in stark black and white, with occasional grey colour values.

Backgrounds are computer generated, while characters are animated mo-cap, which sounds like a disaster, but the result is really quite striking - like Frank Miller's Sin City comic brought to life better than the actual Sin City films managed it.

Given the difficulty that some viewers will have with the presentation, you'd think the film-makers would've gone for an easily accessible noir script, but that too is somewhat alienating, with the threads of scientific experimentation, corporate conspiracy and the hunt for a woman's missing sister only really peaking in the story's final third.

Until then, it's an involved but slow crawl that may not be enough to hold a casual viewer's attention. On the flip side, the creators deserve genuine respect for not compromising the integrity of their vision in order to appeal to a wider audience.