« Dias de Gracia », one film, three versions

Everardo Gout will have his initiation to the Croisette with his first film Dias de Gracia,  competing for the Caméra d’Or, shown Out of Competition in a midnight screening. The director has shot each time period evoked in the feature film in a different manner, even using the work of different composers.

Mexico, in 2002, 2006, 2010. A cop. A hostage. A woman. Corruption, violence, vengeance. Three destinies played out over thirty days during three football World Cups. Three ways to fight for survival. In directing his first film, Dias de Gracia, Everardo Gout adapted his directorial approach to the screenplay, and used music belonging to each era. Hence, he worked with three different composers.
In 2002, the story is centred on Lupe, a policeman submerged and overwhelmed by corruption. The style is agitated, the light is raw and the music brutal, composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (The Murder of Jesse James). “It had to express heat and tension, violence,” explains the director. To illustrate the situation of the kidnap victim in 2006, the Mexican filmmaker offered a more straightforward and realistic style with music by Atticus Ross, who won the Oscar for the original soundtrack to The Social Network. “We’re in darkness, tension is in the air, not in the movements, it’s a war of nerves.”
Finally, for the third time period evoked, Everardo Gout relied on a more stylised way of filming, by fragments and reflections, to show off the strength of Susana who is facing up to the kidnapping of her husband, The music is more ample, expressing the wait. “I was able to collaborate with the composer of one of my favourite films, In the Mood For Love, the Japanese composer Shigeru Umebayashi, who is a magnificent man.” The Mexican director added: “The idea was to make the viewer aware that he was passing through 3 stories in 3 different time periods, but in a subliminal fashion.”

A.C.

The film is screened at 00.15am in the Grand Théâtre Lumière.