Brit director David Mackenzie has kind of been all over the place in his career, but through all of his films he’s been consistently unremarkable. “Young Adam,” “Hallam Foe” and “Spread” have all been serviceable enough and his forthcoming apocalyptic romance “Perfect Sense,” with Ewan McGregor and Eva Green has been getting exactly the kind of mixed reviews he’s always received. But none of this films have been as light on their feet as “You Instead,” his shot-on-the-fly music festival rom-com.
Filmed guerrilla-style over the course of four and a half days at the T In The Park music festival in Scotland last July, the story 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 trailer for the film introduces them as two stuck up rock stars and then asks us to stick with them for the course of the movie, but unfortunately, these two look like the most irritating people on Earth. We hope it’s just the way the trailer is cut, to highlight the hijinks and difficulty of being cuffed together, but the lack of anything approaching character with some last minute twists of romance didn’t particularly sell us on this.
That said, having sweated out festivals ourselves and understanding how close proximity and music can make romance spark, we’re willing to see if Mackenzie has captured that magic. Check out the trailer, poster and more stills below. The film opens in the U.K. on September 16th. No U.S. distributor is lined up just yet, but we figure the film will show up at TIFF this fall. [Vlicious!/HeyUGuys]
