Our Day Will Come (Redheads)
Notre Jour Viendra

Overview

Credits non contractual

  • Awards:

    • Two outcast redheads set off on a roadtrip of hate, violence and self-destruction. The time for revenge has come...

  • Details:

    • 87 min - Road movie - French - 2009
    • Color - Scope - Dolby SR SRD - HD masters available

  • Directed by:

    • Romain Gavras (director of the stunning Justice's Stress music video)

  • Cast:

    • Vincent Cassel (Mesrine - Best Actor at the Cesar awards 2009, Eastern Promises, Sheitan, Spybound, Irreversible)
    • Olivier Barthelemy (Sheitan)

  • Produced by:

    • Vincent Cassel - 120 Films and Eric Neve - Les Chauves-Souris

  • Delivery:

    • Fall 2010

  • Medias:

  • Photos

    Photos: Kim Chapiron -

  • Synopsis

    What do you do when you're a red-haired teenage loser with no friends except for an older guy, your shrink? When everyone hates you, especially your family? When all your peers make fun of you and kick you around?
    The answer: you and your loser buddy blow all the cash you can get your hands on to buy a sportscar, you dress smart and you head for the land of redheads, Ireland. But what starts off as a search for an ideal, gradually escalates into a rampage of hate, violence and self-destruction.

  • Crew

    A film by
    Romain Gavras
    (director of the stunning Justice's Stress video)

    Produced by
    Vincent Cassel - 120 Films
    Eric Neve and Alexandra Swenden - Les Chauves-Souris
    (Female Agents, Crime Insiders, Spybound, Dobermann)

    Chief editor
    Benjamin Weill
    (Babylon AD)

  • Director’s notes

    Biography Romain Gavras

    In 1994, Romain Gavras co-founds Kourtrajmé Productions with Kim Chapiron. His growing notoriety for music videos and short films culminates in the huge 2007 controversy surrounding the music video STRESS for the group JUSTICE. Kids get violent, filling the streets of Paris with terror.

    In 2010, he is at it again with the music video de BORN FREE for the vocalist M.I.A. In it he blows up redheads in a minefield. Why? How? Gavras categorically refuses to explain himself. At the age of 28, OUR DAY WILL COME     (NOTRE JOUR VIENDRA) is his first feature-length film, and marks the first time he has broken his vow of silence.


    Excerpts from the interview with Romain Gavras

    OUR DAY WILL COME     (NOTRE JOUR VIENDRA) reminds us of ill-fated escapist films like Dino Risi's LE FANFARON or Bertrand Blier's LES VALSEUSES.
    I am influenced, despite myself, by Italian comedies from the 60's and 70's - the films of Fellini and Risi, which make you feel a lot of contradictory emotions. I find it interesting not being in a linear film. It's a comedy, so you have to laugh; it's a drama so you have to cry. Putting the viewer at risk and making him a little lost so that he doesn't know in advance what will happen to him, that is what motivates me.
    When we started talking about the project with producers, we were either going to make the film with a comfortable budget, with imposed limitations, or on a more reasonable budget with total freedom and a more intimate crew. That ties in with the theme of the film: hitting the road and leaving everything behind.

    So is intentionally breaking away a part of your approach?
    Not really, I just tried to make a modern film that captures the mental fog of the times. Movies these days want to make everything understandable. They center on good, bad, left, right, and even on the American empire and communists. However, we are in an age when every thing is a little blurry. I wanted that to be felt - to avoid thinking in terms of good and evil, and using oversimplified, explanatory plot devices.

    Patrick's character is disillusioned, whereas Remy is a fanatic. What do you think they look for in one another?
    For me, the interaction is interesting because Patrick's generation is beyond the stage of revolt. They are former sixties' activists who see their ideals falling apart and their world taking a dive. At the same time, young people today are ready to burn everything but don't really know why. Like the kids who burn cars, not for any political purpose but because they have all the reasons in the world to be full of rage. So when they meet, each finds what he is missing in the other. For Patrick, it is the ability to reignite his flame. For Remy, it is finally having a purpose for his rage.

    There is an element that cannot be dissociated from the tale of initiation: the romantic dimension. Was that intentional?
    Completely. I see the movie like a hopeless romantic comedy. A comedy because there is a lot of humor in the first part of the film, even if not everybody is going to laugh. And romantic because for me, guys with shaved heads walking on a big beach with burning cars is romantic.

    Actually, the film is very visually spacious.
    That is why I didn't want anyone to know in exactly how much time and space the action takes place. To open up the imagination and free up different perspectives. Even for myself. When I was shooting Vincent and Olivier, I felt like I was Emily Brontë, who wrote Wuthering Heights. I think the north of France is every bit as powerful as the great steppes of Ireland.

    Beyond romanticism, was there an idea guiding the film's aesthetic approach?
    In my last music videos, my goal was to make the iconography truly European. That is why I wanted to shoot OUR DAY WILL COME in the north of France, because there is something very dramatic about the landscapes there. You feel it in the people, too. Three-fourths of the film's actors are non-professionals who are locals.

    Why did you make your heroes redheads?
    It came as we were writing. We explored the idea and thought that it would make Remy and Patrick even more iconic and universal, as long as we never talked about it explicitly and as long as they weren't "carrot heads," to avoid it becoming just a joke. In the end, they are hardly even redheaded at all, to highlight their fantasizing about a community that only exists in their minds.

    What made you want to use this strange approach?
    In a way, it is an absurd story taken very seriously. If Ben Stiller had taken on the subject, he would have made a brilliant comedy of it. But we preferred to give it a tragic dimension.

    The fact that your characters are redheads will be seen as an allegory. Does that bother you?
    A little. It freaks me out because metaphors and allegories are like puns; they give me a terrible headache. I wanted to talk about questions of identity without being explicit, by using a surrealist approach. We could say that OUR DAY WILL COME is a film that uses redheads as symbols of being different. They feel like they belong to a people who have no country, no language and no army.

    OUR DAY WILL COME is the kind of story that is constantly at risk.
    From the beginning, I wanted to tell the story of a young guy and an older man who meet and hit the road together, a little like a couple of "Don Quixotes" taking off on a vain and hopeless quest. The basic idea was to make a free-flowing film about a path of initiation. With a particular aim, which was to throw away everything that was too explanatory.

    Why ?
    Simply because I don't like films that offer no mystery. And I have the impression that there are more and more of them around nowadays. Many films are written based on the same narrative model, with an explanation for each action and each feeling. Sometimes it works very well, too. But that is not what I wanted to do. So we directed our energy into making a film of sensations, atmospheres and emotions, where we get from point A to point B by letting the viewer follow the characters down their path.

    As both actor and producer, Vincent Cassel plays an essential role in this film. What was your relationship with him like?
    We couldn't have made the film without him. And I think it took a lot of courage for an actor of his caliber to do this kind of project. OUR DAY WILL COME is a film that can only bring him a lot of trouble and very little fame in the end, because we are not going to do millions at the box office. Plus, I am a young filmmaker and it's my first film: it could easily have been a mess. But Vincent helped me a lot. When he shows up on the set, he knows exactly what you are doing, how he is being filmed, how he is being lighted, what lens you are using. Really basic stuff, but it impressed me. You could tell it wasn't his first barbecue!!!

    Tell us about choosing Olivier Barthélémy.
    Olivier is a truly fine actor. There is something at once subtle and brutal about him. Most of the film's poetry relies on his performance. Olivier Barthélémy and Vincent Cassel alternate between positions of dominating and dominated.

    ...

    What about the film's sexual dimension.
    There definitely is one. It's a film about the quest for identity, which cannot be reduced to a question of community. Identity is also, "Am I homosexual or heterosexual?" Remy is completely lost at the point when Patrick won't stop telling him he is a homo. So it is normal that he asks himself the question. And OUR DAY WILL COME is a film about two guys. In that sense, it is also a love story between two people who are suffering and find each other.

    ...

  • TORONTO SCREENINGS

    1st Press & Industry screening: 12th - Scotiabank 11, 9:00 am
    1st Public screening: 12th - Varsity 8, 9:00 pm
    2nd Public screening: 13th - Varsity 8, 3:30 pm
    2nd Press & Industry screening: 16th - Tiff Bell Lightbox 2, 9:15 am
    3rd Public screening: 19th - Scotiabank 2, 3:30 pm