Alexis Dos Santos, The Bureau (11/12/2009)

Unmade Beds paints a rosier than usual picture of life in a London squat.

There are no squalid conditions or bailiffs attempting to cave in the front door with sledgehammers. Instead, the film shows a lively mini-community where artists, musicians and film-makers hang out together and encourage each other in their pursuits. The creative ideas flow as freely as the copious amounts of alcohol and casual sex. I have no idea whether this is a more accurate depiction but the film is supposedly based on the experiences of the director Alexis Dos Santos’ friends.

The main protagonist in Unmade Beds is Axl (Fernando Tielve), a baby-faced Spaniard with a mop of unruly hair who travels to London in search of the father he has never met. All he has to go on is a name, Anthony Hemmings, and it takes a lot of thumbing through the phone book before he feels that he has found his man. When not engaged in this quest, Axl spends his nights going to gigs, getting uproariously drunk and relying on the sofas of strangers, for a place to sleep off his hangovers.

One morning he wakes up in the squat where Mike (Iddo Goldberg) and Hannah (Katia Winter) live. They invite him to move in and Axl is glad to even if it means sitting through repeated screenings of Mike’s skydiving videos. They also help him to trace his long lost dad or at least an estate agent who might well be him. Axl poses as a student looking for a flat and arranges a series of viewings. Of course he is more interested in checking out the letting agent than the properties themselves but is he really ready to become acquainted with his absent parent?

This slim plotline runs in tandem with the story of Vera (Déborah François), a young Belgian girl who also lives in the squat. Vera and Axl do not meet until a party at the end of the film but they unwittingly share items left lying around the place. Vera is on the run from a failed relationship which seems to have floundered largely due to the fact that she once completed a maze in just over a minute whilst her boyfriend was lost for hours. This is perhaps not the most serious of compatibility issues but it certainly did for Vera and her man.

One evening, Vera meets a boy known only as ‘X-Ray Man’ at a party and goes to bed with him. There is no sex between them as they are both far too drunk for any such shenanigans. After this, the pair arranges a series of dates based on vague instructions which leave it largely up to fate to decide whether they get together on a more permanent basis.

That is about it as far as the story goes for Unmade Beds relies on improvisation and the interplay between the various characters to move things along. Fortunately, Axl and his friends are all pleasant company to be with even if they are almost fatally hip. Make no mistake, all these kids are cool and sexy with an apparent natural instinct for wearing good- looking clothes and listening to the right music. If you were not of a similar ilk when you were a teenager then you probably wanted to hang out with them at a time when belonging seemed so important.

The film reminds us that for these young bohemians not everything is one long party. These characters may lack possessions to tie them down but they are already carrying intangible baggage. They possess a fear of emotional intimacy and an uncertainty about having anything more than a passing relationship with other human beings. The film’s title can easily be read as a metaphor for the unfinished personal business in their lives and the mess that they leave in their wake.

The generally free form nature of ‘Unmade Beds’ (reflected in the deliberately shaky camera work) means that just when you feel that you know where events are heading the film hangs a surprise left turn. It’s a fresh take on a familiar strain of indie movie which is greatly helped by its director being a cultural outsider as Dos Santos hails from Argentina.

The low budget nature of the enterprise means that most of the film’s soundtrack is provided by unsigned musicians although you might recognise the voice of Kimya Dawson (who provided the songs for Juno) on one track. The international cast is similarly comprised of talented unknowns with the exception of Déborah François who has already made something of a name for herself in films such as The Child and The Page Turner. Her performance in Unmade Beds is further evidence that her star is definitely on the ascendant.

It will help to be young or at least young at heart, to like this film. If you have a couple of kids and a mortgage it might just make you pine for lost days. In my opinion, any film where two characters conduct a heartfelt conversation whilst one of them is wearing the head of a bear costume is well on its way to being a winner.

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