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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vermä 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
