Five Minutes With… Bruno Gascon

The writer-director behind Irreversível (Irreversible) gives DQ the inside story on this Portuguese crime series, explaining how he was inspired by Nordic noir and why the show pairs a detective with a psychiatrist.

Written and directed by Bruno Gascon, Portuguese drama Irreversível (Irreversible) follows a police detective and a psychiatrist who come together to solve a brutal murder in a seaside town.

Margarida Vila-Nova plays psychiatrist Júlia Mendes, who forms a partnership with inspector Pedro Sousa (Rafael Morais) to find out who killed a girl called Luisa (Paula de Magalhães). As they unravel the crime, they battle their own demons and try to keep their lives intact.

Meanwhile, a woman called Rita (Helena Caldeira) is trying to find answers as to the whereabouts of her daughter after she is mysteriously taken by a social worker and seemingly vanishes without a trace. In a town where everyone is hiding something, the search for the truth may reveal secrets that cannot be forgotten.

The six-part series is produced by Caracol Studios for Portuguese public broadcaster RTP, with The Yellow Affair handling international distribution. Earlier this year, it was highlighted to international buyers at the MipDrama series showcase in Cannes.

While Irreversible concludes on RTP on Monday, Gascon has already lined up his next project, an adaptation of João Tordo’s novel Past Waters. Set against the dark, rain-soaked streets of Lisbon, the psychological thriller follows PSP sub-commissioner Pilar Benamor (Helena Caldeira), a fearless yet troubled investigator confronting her personal demons while unravelling the violent deaths of two teenagers.

Produced by Caracol Studios, TV-ON Producciones and Admirable Films for RTP, it is due to begin production in 2025. Tordo will write the series with Gascon, who also directs.

Here, Gascon speaks to DQ about making Irreversible, why he is inspired by Nordic noir and how he works with his cast to find the psychology behind their characters.

Irreversible launched on RTP last month. What’s the reaction been like?
The series is really good, the reviews are great. Everything is fine. But in Portugal, they only release one episode per week so I’ve been getting messages [from people] saying they want to see it all at once. They’re used to watching it all in a row so it’s hard for them to watch an episode per week. People are desperate to watch it. For me, that’s a good review.

What are the origins of the story?
I like to watch Nordic noir crime thrillers. I’m a huge fan of them. What I wanted to do was create a Nordic noir thriller but with a Portuguese identity, set in a small fishing village with the sea and where everyone knows each other. My idea was based on that.

What I always like to do is talk about hard subjects, like societal problems. That’s one of the themes of multiple projects I’ve done. What I’ve done is create this web where you have all these social problems in this town with a Nordic noir thriller where this girl dies and everyone keeps trying to understand who killed her.

Viewers only discover who dies at the end of episode one, giving you lots of time to set up the world of the show.
You have two main stories, two main timelines, where you follow the girl, Luisa, who is killed and a woman, Rita, whose daughter is missing. It creates a complex web where you’re trying to find the killer and follow the drama of this woman. The idea is to suggest these are totally different stories, they don’t have any connection at all, and in the end you see everything connects to everything else.

You’re then going to follow Sara (Laura Dutra), because she becomes the first person accused of killing Luisa, her girlfriend. Between that and the policeman and the psychiatrist, you see a lot of different stories in a small town where everyone knows each other. We have this kind of culture in Portugal, and I tried to recreate that inside a huge thriller.

Why did you decide to pair a police detective with a psychiatrist?
For two reasons. The first is that the psychiatrist’s daughter is the same age as the girl who was killed. That means it’s something that can be very personal to her. And the other reason is it’s always good to have a psychiatrist to try to help you deconstruct the idea of a murder, and try to help the police to talk to young people to help them find out what happened. Police officers are too rough when they’re questioning someone, for example. The idea to have a psychiatrist is to have someone who is warmer.

You wrote and directed all six episodes.
I’ve done already a few projects [for the screen] and what I’ve learned is it’s much easier when you write for yourself [to direct], because I’m the writer when I’m writing and I’ll already know what I’m going to do as a director. The process is much easier like that.

Sometimes when you have a writer or when you have a director, it’s hard to find the connection between you and them because a writer wants one thing and the director wants another. So for me, it’s much simpler to do both. Until now, that’s what I have done. But for my next project, I’m doing something different [sharing writing duties with João Tordo]. I’m trying a different approach because I don’t like to be too secure; I like to take risks.  So it’s something different, and the risk is just to put myself in a different position.

What’s your writing process?
I search a lot and read a lot about subjects I want to talk about. For example, if I see something on the news that would be interesting to write about, I try to create something from it. After that, I spend six or seven months creating all the things I want to talk about and creating all the characters. In Irreversible, I don’t know how many versions I had – 10, maybe 15 versions. As I wanted to create this complex web where everything connects in the end, it was quite hard because, for example, I wrote episodes one, two and three, then reached four but something was not right. So I had to go back to one and write everything again. That was something I don’t usually do, so it was more complex.

How were you inspired by Nordic noir when it came to the show’s visual style?
You can see that there are a lot of shots of the sea in episode one. And in the final episode, you come back to see lots of shots of the sea, because the sea is also a character in the series. The sea has a very important meaning; it’s a very important theme throughout the whole series.

And how do you like to work with actors?
I talk a lot with actors, working a lot on the psychological side of the characters. For example, the past of the characters, the present of the characters, the future of the characters. And when you’re directing this psychological thing, it completely changes your physical side. When you are happy, you just walk in a different way than when you’re sad. When you’re depressed, you eat differently, you think differently, you talk differently. Psychology is a very important part of the characters because I always try to create characters with actors who can be as real as possible. The more real it is, the better for people to connect with them.

Irreversible has made an impact internationally. How do you create stories that cross borders?
[Portuguese content is] going to have a lot of international success because we always try to create a story that is not just a Portuguese story, it’s a worldwide story. What I do is talk about emotions and, no matter where you are, in China or Brazil, you always feel connected to the story. And for international viewers, that’s the idea. It happens in Portugal, it’s in Portuguese, but it’s a worldwide story. Emotions don’t have any country; they’re for everyone.

tagged in: Bruno Gascon, Caracol Studios, Irreversible, Irreversível, RTP, The Yellow Affair