Bourdos’ Renoir gives you the feeling of living in Renoir’s Cagnes-sur-Mer. It’s now a suburb of Nice, but in the summer of 1915, it was the country home of Auguste Renoir. The estate Cagnes-sur mer is still extant and still holds the picnicky aura that Renoir craved in his old age when he was with rheumatoid arthritis and could scarcely hold a brush. 
Painting alfresco was among Renoir’s pleasures. It was relatively easy to secure him on a sturdy chair to pose his model Andrée. Sometimes his caretakers carried him to a favorite stream (with great effort), where he sat on the stony shore, brushes taped to his hands near wicker within easy reach. Though how he might open the basket is Bourdos’ mystery.
It’s customary to pack bread and wine, but Bourdos does show the rest. Eating is not as important as painting at this picnic.
The cast: Vincent Rottier as Jean Renoir; Christa Thréret as Andrée Heuschling; Michel Bouquet as Pierre- Auguste Renoir
Featured Image: Vincent Rottier as Jean Renoir
See Gilles Bourdos. Renoir (2012). The screenplay by Gilles Bourdos, Jerome Tonnerre, and Michel Spinosa is based on Jacques Renoir’s Le Table Amoureux; Jacques Renoir. Le Table Amoureux [aka Table of Lovers ].Paris: Fayard, 2003. Published in the U.S. as Renoir an Intimate Biography (2017)