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Film Review: You Instead

Olly Mann reckons you should watch this film if you have ever got wasted at 3am in a field.

By Olly Mann

16 Sep 2011, 14:00

I know we had Indian Summers for the past few years but I can't for the life of me see why this 'rock and roll rom-com', shot entirely at a music festival, is being released half-way through September. Perhaps the rationale is to provide a sunshine top-up for those of us dreading the winter months. It's more likely to make an audience feel miserable that Summer's over. Still, that only underlines the skill with which Hallam Foe director David Mackenzie has captured the sights, sounds and sensations of a British Summer festival: you can almost taste the mud.

The secret to his success is his bold technique of filming every single scene (save, I suspect, some cleverly edited cut-aways in the denouement) at Scotland's T In The Park festival. Not since Sacha Baron Cohen last donned his lederhosen have I spent so much time in a cinema thinking: 'how did they film THAT?'. Do these women in the dance tent realise that they're dancing with an actor, playing a character? Did the fictional bands portrayed in the film actually play on the main stage at T, or did they film those bits late at night when everyone was asleep? How did they get all this in the can in four days - did they sleep at ALL? One thing's for sure - the editing by Jake Roberts is BAFTA-worthy.

Frustratingly, all this documentary-realism serves as the backdrop to an unconvincing and actually pretty irritating narrative. Hot young electro-rocker Adam (Luke Treadaway), for reasons that are never properly explained, is handcuffed to hot young fem-punk Morello (Natalia Tena) by a mysterious elderly 'prophet' who happens to be hanging around backstage. And, though they're chalk and cheese, they have to spend the festival together, and begin to fall for each other and... well, you know how that goes. The actors bring as much reality as they can to their slender characters – there are some especially tender moments after dark – but the script, by first-time screenwriter Thomas Leveritt, doesn't give them enough to work with. We can see why he likes her: she's fun, spiky, unpredictable, sexy. But why does she like him? He's just... sexy. That's it. And he's got a guitar. Any red-blooded woman might enjoy being handcuffed to him, to jump his bones. But grow to love him? Nah.

But, lose the plot (which, after all, is what festivals are all about), and there's much to enjoy. If you've ever trudged through the mud at T, Glasto, V or Reading, you'll relate to the images: the drunken teens in obscene tees, the overpriced hot-dog stalls, the slamming of portaloo doors, the dodgy-looking Ferris Wheel you only go on when you're pissed. The vivid, visceral stuff that's never quite captured by the TV coverage. And because Treadaway's character is in a MGMT-style headline band, we get to go behind-the-scenes too: the VIP hospitality tent; the £500-a-night yurt.

Just as The Inbetweeners Movie brilliantly encapsulates the excitement and adandonment that so many of my generation felt when we took our first (and inevitably in my case, only) lads holiday to Malia, so You Instead pungently represents the sun-kissed, mud-soaked modern British music festival. So – despite the weak script - if you've ever got wasted in a field at 3am, you'll find something to enjoy here. Even in September.