Unmade Beds

Fernando Tielve, Déborah François and director Alexis Dos Santos talk about making "Unmade Beds"

MAIN STREET, PARK CITY

Having just taken in my last screening of the 2009 festival, I'm taking a brief pause up on Main Street before heading to the airport for a flight back to LAX. The weather is warm, the crowds have thinned quite a bit from the past few days and there are camera crews everywhere talking to people about today's historic inauguration of Barack Obama.

This last film for the festival was "Unmade Beds," a quirky British film that takes place in an exuberant London where longing and zeal plunge young expatriates into lusty adventures and momentous encounters. When wide-eyed Spaniard Axl comes to London on a quest for the father who abandoned him before his earliest memories, he lands in the middle of a creative hotbed - a free-spirited community of squatters. Among them is Vera, a Belgian girl seeking to restore her faith in romantic destiny after meeting a charismatic stranger. As Axl and Vera separately pursue these connections, they circle each other's orbits.

This is a film as much about people trying to reconnect with themselves as it it about people looking for meaning within their external relationships. The film, much like its characters, spends much of its time adrift in search of a connection, feeling a bit work-in-progress as it winds its way through the streets of London. Does this impact the ultimate message of the film? It does, but mostly through imbuing a sense of disconnect in the audience that's an echo of the experiences of those on screen. Those not up for a slightly-quirky, very European film that focuses almost entirely on character without bothering to develop much of a story arc will feel immensely disappointed by this film.

Preceding "Unmade Beds" was a fantastic dramatic short film from first-time director Katie Wolfe entitled "This is her." It's a 12-minute tale about the bitter aftertaste of love. As she watches her younger self in the throes of childbirth, a woman's wry commentary reveals exactly what life has in store for her, her loving husband, and the 6-year-old, "bitch", who will one day steal his affections and destroy her life. Masterfully directed - I expect to see great things from Wolfe in the near future.