Unmade Beds

There is a lot to like about this offbeat indie coming-of-age drama. It's young, hip, tender, cool, boasts a cracking soundtrack (one of the best this year) and has a loose narrative that will appeal to fans of Before Sunrise. There are times, however, where Unmade Beds looks like it's trying too hard to be breezy.

Twenty-year-old floppy-haired Spaniard Axl (Tielve, The Devil's Backbone) is searching for his father in London, whom he believes is estate agent Anthony (Lintern). As he poses as a student looking for somewhere to rent, Axl and Anthony get to know each other - he's a pretty decent guy, married with two girls - but Axl can't drum up the courage to confront him. His way of dealing with this is to spend his days sleeping and nights getting blotto in various East End nightclubs with his squat friends, one of which is resident Mike (Goldberg) who introduces him to the bohemian lifestyle. Running parallel to this is Vera's (Francois) story. The heartbroken Vera works in a bookshop and drifts through her days until she meets a handsome stranger (Michiel Huisman). They hit it off but, wary of starting something too soon, Vera and her new man take things slow - they don't swap names or phone numbers and only vaguely arrange to meet up on dates.

When it comes to his two main characters, writer-director Fernando Dos Santos (Glue) feels more comfortable when his camera is on Axl than Vera. Axl's journey is given more screen time and his character feels more rounded - he's the little boy lost of the story and Dos Santos can't hide his love of the character. When it come to Vera, though, Dos Santos is less intrusive: the girl remains a mystery and the audience is never privy to what makes her tick (maybe she hasn't discovered that herself yet) or why she has broken up with her boyfriend. When shooting her, Dos Santos is prone to blurring the edges of his frame as if Vera is in a waking dream, distant and aloof. Her poetic voiceover (spoken in French) doesn't shed any more light other than she's lonely and at a crossroads. Vera and Huisman's agreement that they share little about their past with each other is Dos Santos' get out clause. This isn't a critique, as a little mystery is always a good thing.

Where both stories are handled delicately, Dos Santos rams home the commune environment of the squat. This squat has to be the cheeriest, cleanest squat in history, inhabited by the friendliest people all looking to do each other a good turn (namely experimental threesomes). A little edginess in this department would have strengthened the film. It's a lazy kind of film that bursts into energy when the soundtrack is let loose. Although Dos Santos over uses Tindersticks (never a bar thing but the melancholic Cherry Blossoms is used three times), the whip-crack tunes of (We Are) Performance, Mary and the Boy, Black Moustache and New Skin stir things up.