Our Day Will Come

Our Day Will Come (2010) dir. Romain Gavras
Starring: Vincent Cassel, Olivier Barthelemy

**½

By Alan Bacchus

Young Remy is a redhead, which has fostered an inferiority complex. He’s pushed around by his schoolmates, his mother, his sister and even his World of Warcraft internet girlfriend. And so when Vincent Cassel, playing a disaffected therapist named Patrick, meets up with him, it sparks Remy’s inner nihilist, which puts him on a mission to travel to Ireland and unite with his redheaded brethren.

Romain Gavras (son of Costas Gavras) has created something in the realm of a French Fight Club, but without the fighting and the satire. The film works best in the first half when we see Patrick take the emasculated Remy under his wing and teaches him to stand up for himself. He starts a fight with some Arabs in a café just to see Remy's reaction. Patrick then gives Remy an alter ego, assuming the guise of a kick boxer in order to pick up a couple of girls on the street. Once Remy has taken control of his life and asserted his dominance as a redhead, they embark on a rambunctious road trip to Ireland.

Vincent Cassel is typically magnetic as the Tyler Durden figure in Remy’s life. He’s also credited as producer, which perhaps explains how he could be convinced to shave his head and eyebrows, appear full monty and engage in a rather eye-popping three-way sex scene in which he actually lights a woman’s chest on fire.

After a rather involving setup, the film loses focus fast, and in the second half it devolves into a series of increasingly random events and inexplicable behaviour from the characters. Patrick loses his sanity completely after the aforementioned drunken chest fire lighting incident and finishes out the film in a zombie-like daze.

Barthelemy as Remy is a good match to the Cassel aura of debauchery. By the end, Gavras successfully transforms Remy into a cross bow-armed badass Travis Bickle, rescuing Patrick from society in a balloon.

Gavras does manage to salvage the film with the odd but strangely beautiful ending as the two men escape the world and sail off into the sunset. I’m not quite sure what it means, or how it completes their journey, but somehow it feels right.