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Unmade Beds review
:. Director: Alexis Dos Santos
:. Starring: Fernando Tielve, Déborah François
:. Script: Alexis Dos Santos
:. Running Time: 1:33
:. Year: 2009
:. Original Title: Unmade Beds
:. Country: UK
:. Official Site: Unmade Beds
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For his second feature, Alexis Dos Santos (Glue) ventures into French new wave territory, offering us a glimpse at a microcosm, a younger generation fueled by rock, art and love in the heart of London. This is obviously quite a change of setting, knowing that the capital of French new wave is obviously Paris, a city whose inherent elitism and snobbism were a perfect match for this film movement. With its roughness and coolness, London is a better setting for the edgier styles of filmmakers such as Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) or Guy Ritchie (Rocknrolla) but Mr. Dos Santos is able to successfully transpose there with a formula based on youthful existentialism.
While having a French character, a girl played by Deborah Francois, can certainly be seen as a physical connection to the French film movement, the Spanish boy (Fernando Tielve) seems to rather be linked to Latin American cinema and, to be frank, both his personality and physical appearance are strongly reminiscent of Diego Luna (Y Tu Mama Tambien).
What these two characters have in common, besides being roommates, is their quest and existentialist questions, two major ingredients of French new wave films. While the boy searches for his father in London and, in the process hooks up aimlessly with whomever he meets during nights of drunkenness, the girl looks for love through absurd settings used to prove the authenticity of the feelings involved.
Both characters are dreamers, which is emphasized by the atmosphere of the movie, which advances at a slow pace and is enveloped in a strong sense of aesthetics and light poetry. What Mr. Dos Santos is interested in is mostly the inner state of his characters, which is why the London setting remains somewhat in the background. Contrary to a film like 9 Songs, where the British music scene was as important as the relationships between its two protagonists, you won't see much of the nightlife and local scene here, everything happening inside apartments, except for a couple scenes in pubs - shooting most scenes inside can be seen as a metaphor for the inner exploration of the characters.
When the end comes, the film ties one narrative thread while leaving the other one undone. This is one of the rare cases when naivety and disillusion cross paths, without falling into cheesiness or cynicism — one accepts the rules of this light film without being forced. Unmade Beds proves to be a charming work and a quite successful thematic experiment.
Fred Thom
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