Unmade Beds

This movie makes me happy. Because the director didn't cave for a crowd pleaser nor a nonsensical festival piece. Intriguing, gentle, wonderful visuals, fantastic dialogue, kick ass soundtrack. The director accomplished to make a moving work that's light, floats but touches. It perfectly leads its naive endearing lead characters through a place and moment where everybody is in transit without being overly explanatory. Tielve & Francois are adorable, Huisman and Goldberg are no less than excellent. The soundtrack might not be your thing maybe but it completely matches the scene it is set in and has some great tracks. It sure is mine and i thought it to be grand. If you liked the movie Cashback you'll love this one too and the other way around:)

I went to see this film because it was described as being "young and fresh". Afterwards, I can only say it is boring and pretentious. There is no story to speak of, no dialogue apart from some vague conversations, no character development, no point.

There is, on the other hand, a lot of loud music by bands I don't know (but are undoubtedly very hip), there are a lot of images of young people uttering would-be philosophical wisecracks, and there is a lot of partying, drinking and smoking going on.

This could be a sort of nouvelle vague-ish, real life document about young people and the way they live, but I'm afraid it utterly fails. Or maybe I'm too old for this sort of film.

There is one plus: wonderful Belgian actress Déborah François.

It was like a detour, but eventually it would reach the destination. I like the symbol of the maze which Vera talked about at the beginning of her story: she used up all her luck in the maze and then she began to lose direction in real life. Perhaps for Axl and Vera, the recovery process was a detour—avoiding something (love perhaps? love from a lover and love from a father) and yearning for it at the same time. Then Mike's parachute theory unlocked their dilemma: if you cannot do something, maybe it's because you are not ready for it, or you don't feel like doing it now. The film portrays London subculture through foreigners' perspective, which shows the other sides of this metropolis and makes the story and images real and powerful. The music selection and the images are just awesome, especially the bokeh images.

Alexis dos Santos' film 'Unmade Beds' is actually really skillfully well made; a pity, then that's it's so damn annoying. It's a tale of impossible beautiful young people living without any visible means of support in a warehouse in Hoxton, smoking lots of cigarettes to an achingly hip soundtrack, and generally getting entangled in each others lives (and bodies). It's also the sort of film where the characters look perpetually soulful and think lots of supposedly deep thoughts. Of course, one thing a film can do is idealise reality, and many of the best movies eventually end with sentimental payoffs; but this film is rife with unearned epiphanies, the whole film is a mood piece with no supporting substance. The poignancy is sham; dos Santos ultimately has nothing to say, although, as he says it rather well, there is hope he might produce something self-indulgent in future.

I hated Unmade Beds at first because I did not recognize it. I have revised this review so many times already that I hope IMDb will allow just one more. I think I can get it right at last.

At first, this seemed like a bleak and depressing picture of young people: of random, meaningless sex, total aimlessness in life, and grating, obnoxious music. They seemed more old and worn-out than young, more dead than alive, and it made me very sad.

But then suddenly I saw that they are exactly like me when I was their age, and if this movie had been made in the East Village of New York City in 1967 instead of London more than 40 years later, I could easily have been in it; and not one word, not one scene, not the tiniest detail would have to change. This is EXACTLY what life was like then.

The life it shows looks bleak and pointless to older generations (that's me now), but under the surface it is a life of unbelievable, matchless discovery and productivity. At the time I seemed just as lost as the kids in this movie do, but I look back on the late 1960s as the most glorious time in the history of the world, a time of unprecedented beauty, change and innovation. I trust that the generation depicted so accurately in Unmade Beds will feel the same about their own youth 40 years from now.

I especially recommend this movie to old farts like me who hate it at first: that may be because it hits closer to home than you expected it to. Let it get under your skin and see what happens.