Let’s Enjoy The Oddly Intense Drama Of These Renault Brochure Pictures

Do you know the artist Cindy Sherman? She’s fantastic. If you’re not familiar with her, a good use of your work time today would be to Google her and also keep refreshing Autopian pages so we get ad impression fractions of a cent, over and over. Anyway, one of Sherman’s projects was called Untitled Film Stills, which she mostly did from 1977 t0 1980, where she would set up these scenes and photograph them in such a way that they felt like a film still from some movie that never actually existed, at least not outside the confines of Cindy Sherman’s head. She tended to do all of these all by herself, so you might notice that she often has a hand sort of hidden or obscured, because she had to have a hand free to click the remote shutter control on her camera.

Anyway, I’ve always found these to be really evocative and interesting photographs, and I think that, somehow, Renault is working, likely unwittingly, on a similar plane of aesthetic experience as Sherman, because a surprising number of their brochure pictures have a strange sense of drama and this odd clipped-from-a-larger-narrative quality that these faux film stills have. Some even feel like film stills themselves?

I have some here to show you what I mean, so, you know, prepare accordingly:

We can start with the most obvious film still-like ones, like this Renault LeCar image up there. This one feels like a still from a late ’70s/early ’80s Woody Allen movie, where maybe they’re both NYU professors and he was having an affair with his student and she was the student’s mom, and then somehow they ended up involved and there’s a subplot where he keeps going from doctor to doctor to have them look at a persistent rash on his back that is in either the shape of Portugal or Italy, depending on what he ate last.

This one is also very film-still-like: those two in the car are the spouses of the two blurry folks in the foreground, who they are spying on because they discovered their spouses are having an affair. Then, probably, the two cheated-upon spouses end up having an affair of their own, and let’s say they all end up moving in together to form a polycule in a muskrat ranch in the Massif Central.

Okay, visually, this one is illustrated, so less like a conventional movie still, but there’s plenty going on in here. It feels like maybe a movie poster about two couples who were both in sham marriages to hide that they’re gay, but they found each other and now formed two new couples. Look at the body language here! Also, that kid in the hammock in that Renault 4 is pretty great. I would love to know if anyone actually did that, stringing up a kid-hammock inside the car.

Oh, also, there’s a time travel angle at play here because look:

That’s a Zune. I know a Zune when I see one, people. A Zune 30 plus years before the Zune!

This one is clearly not a film still, but more of a painting, but there is definitely drama here; that shepherdess is not happy with the 4CV driver. Look at that look she’s giving him! This is beyond almost hitting a lamb. There’s some history there.

These R4 Cabrios are pretty amazing; they’re more like a Jolly or Fun Car, like a Citroën Mehari or VW Thing. I mean, there’s one of those tram-to-the-zoo chains instead of doors! But what I want to point out here is the intense unspoken story happening. That woman in the back is clearly being menaced by the dude with the tennis racket; that’s a threat if I ever saw one. And off-the-shoulder over there at the front of the car I think set him up to it, as she stands a discreet distance away but looks back to be sure the message is loud and clear.

Look at tennis man; that is not a face of someone playing around. Ponytail better get some backup, pronto.

Finally, I just want to show our bellhop friend, because everything about his stance, expression, and demeanor are saying “the fuck is this?” as he lifts that bag. I’m not sure why he’s having that reaction, but he is definitely having it. He’s either seen that bag before and knows it does not belong there, or he’s picked it up and it’s growled or squealed or something.

Whatever it is, it’s not adding up.