Notre jour viendra

After seeing the directors music videos (I use the term music very loosely) I was looking forward to seeing this film. Expecting a certain amount of violence. Sadly it was very few and far between. Not what the trailer or cover art portrayed it to be. It's nowhere near La Haine at all. Just a sad kid trying to work out his sexuality and an older man having a midlife crisis.

It's not a terrible film though and the acting is good. Especially Vincent Cassel. But it never really satisfied and left me hoping they would totally go off the rails. Sadly. They didn't.

Worth a watch.

Romain Gavras' debut feature Notre Jour Viendra arrived without any formal connection to "Born Free," the 9-minute music video he directed for artist M.I.A., released just months earlier in 2010. But to fully grasp the context of this mad epic, "Born Free" should be considered required viewing. The short violently depicts the regimented and senseless capture and execution of people with red hair by squadrons of roaming military men around Los Angeles. "Born Free" provoked such controversy that its appearance on YouTube was censored or removed altogether the day after its April 26 premiere, deemed gratuitous, inappropriate, and sensational, not to mention anti-American. Regardless of its reception and interpretation, few could have known that "Born Free" was merely act one in a significantly grander "arc de roux" that Gavras would soon recommence.

Notre Jour Viendra, however it was conceived, portrays the struggle of two men with red hair. They may not live in the same world as the poor guys in "Born Free," but their existences are duly threatened by a set of much more realistic circumstances; latent discrimination against redheads in everyday life. With little explanation, Gavras' strange directorial debut takes the idea of the embattled redhead (not to be mistaken for some esoteric metaphor, this time) and brings us to the break of a silent swell of irate frustration in a saga of the same thread, already begun in a land far away.

The tale unravels with precision and fury, yet leaving quite a bit of room to the imagination. Gavras makes direct hits with every point of humor, but the hearty laughs ring out across an expanse of cruelty that we ourselves must question, and that our two protagonists, Patrick (Cassel) and Rémy (Barthelemy) are determined to traverse. Of the duo, Rémy, with hair the color of earthy rhubarb, the young man, might be seen as the "Born Free" video to Patrick's Notre Jour Viendra. Rémy is young and foolish. The world hates him. He understands neither himself nor the way the people treat him; senselessly. Patrick is middle-aged, somewhere between auburn and gray. A practiced red-head with a bitter, wizened view of the big picture. Which he finds himself orienting young Rémy with on their charge north to Ireland, a perceived haven for their kind. But what begins as a half-hearted escape escalates with ever-growing magnitude during a serious of encounters with a computer lab full of gamers, some Arabs at a bar, a car salesman, and some knockabout kids among others.

Sébastien Akchoté's original score deftly permits the audience to revel in the fleeting pleasure of the film's happier moments, but unrelenting in its careening trajectory towards an ominous and unimaginable (yet potentially glorious) outcome. Darker than drugs, Bergman bleak, played with subtle irreverence, and full of scenes that beg multiple interpretations and viewings, Notre Jour Viendra marches defiantly— and unravels maddeningly — towards its crescendo in 80 short minutes to claim mortal entry into any "Best of 2010" list that a disappointing number of sleepy, groove-lacking critics should be revising with fearful diligence...just in case the beautiful, red creatures of the world manage to forsake their impending extinction of rumor and rise up with the flames of savage retribution for the cruel prejudice and chilling apathy they've endured for so long.

Here's hoping for a third act to come in this provocative, inspired chronicle. Vive les roux! Vive les vermäs!

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ver•mä 1. noun an attractive person with red hair 2. interjection used to express admiration for or attraction to someone with red hair 3. adjective vibrantly or alluringly red

I attended the screening of "Our Day Will Come" at SXSW and I was pleasantly surprised. The movie is a road rage of destruction and carnage and I sat at the edge of my seat and just thought how cool is this! However after seeing the movie I had completely fallen in love with it, but afterwards as I saw it once again, I began to realize some flaws.

First and foremost the dialogue feels forced at some times. In a certain scene Romain Gavras seems unsure on how to proceed and suddenly skips to the next scene and makes the following scene a bit unbelievable.

Second it seems unrealistic, that the boy in the movie really thinks his utopia is Ireland. It feels more like an excuse to get the film moving forward.

This being said the movie has one of the best psychedelic soundtracks and it makes the ending even more memorable and emotional.

The cinematography is also sublime. It reflects perfectly how the main characters feel.

Vincent Cassel plays his character with a cool ironic distance and with a spark in his eye, which makes him more believable as the intelligent and arrogant man he plays.

All in all this movie doesn't not play on dialogue, but its force is the way it depicts an emotional meltdown for two persons and how it effects the world around them. The movie brings back memories to when I saw "Clean, Shaven" and "Our Day Will Come" is definitely in my top 10 movies of all time.

This is not a real review, it should be understood more as a collection of impressions on the film.

Let's say this, if one wants to watch a film that is needlessly strange and senseless then this is the film for him because otherwise he will only find himself in front of senseless confusion without a real plot, indeed, there is a plot and it takes only halfway through the film and without a real meaning, even at the beginning it would like to have a plot and also have a moral, instead it only manages to give the spectator a terrible and terrible confusion without rhyme or reason, which is why I believe that this film is almost a waste of time.

Wow! There's something innately thrilling about a film that is constantly on the verge of it's own self-destruction, of teetering on the edge of believability, and at the same time completely committed to its own madness.

Absolutely enjoyed the experience. I set out to screen Alexander Payne's 'The Descendants' at the beginning of the evening and found myself a bit depressed and bored after the first ten minutes. (Usually the ten-minute mark is the fork in the road for me.)

On the glowing advice of a workmate I decided to screen 'Our Day Will Come'. This was the pill I needed.

Gavras' hand on the wheel here is even, lucid, and in control. But the bizarre turns of events, chance meetings which either bear fruit or become deeply passionate relationships, and the film's unique shimmy all had me seduced.

Fun stuff. To be taken with laughter and not to be taken lightly. Where do we go from here, Gavras? We don't know. Take us there.