David Mackenzie‘s an interesting sort of director. Ever since his debut a decade ago or so with the British indie “The Last Great Wilderness,” he’s created a series of solid, consistently interesting dramas, none of which are bad (though “Spread” comes close), but none of which are truly excellent either (the underrated “Hallam Foe” is the next best thing, however). But he’s always had interesting taste, been able to get strong performances out of his casts, and marched to the beat of his own drum, and we’ve always believed that he’d knock something out of the park one of these days.
He’s got two opportunities to do so in 2011 — we’ve already had our first glimpse at the apocalyptic romance “Perfect Sense,” with Ewan McGregor and Eva Green, which picked up strong-to-mixed notices at Sundance this year, and now a trailer’s arrived, via Bleeding Cool, for his second picture of the year — the music festival-set romantic comedy “You Instead.”
The film was shot guerrilla-style over the course of four and a half days at the T in the Park music festival in Scotland last July (we’ve been — it’s like Bonnaroo if every other attendee wanted to headbutt you and set you on fire), and follows members of two feuding bands, Adam of The Make (rising star Luke Treadaway) and Morello from The Pinks (Natalia Tena, from the last few “Harry Potter” films), who are handcuffed together and are forced to scour the festival in order to be freed of each other. Inevitably, however, sparks start to fly…
The cast also includes the director’s brother Alistair Mackenzie, and the excellent, overdue-for-a-big-break comic actor Matthew Baynton (who stole the show a few years back in another pair of music-related films, “1 2 3 4” and “Telstar“), and the film premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival last month to decent reviews — the general word being that, while the it’s a fairly frothy concoction, it’s also well-executed.
It’s playing at SXSW at the moment — with screenings tomorrow at 9.30 and Friday at 6.00 — and, with backing from BBC Films, it should open in the UK later in the year, although there’s no word on a US release as yet. The trailer’s a little muddled, and seems to hit pretty much every beat of the film, but there’s certainly enough here to pique our interest. Watch the clip below.