Alexis Dos Santos (Argentina, 2008)

The youthful, sensuous and beautifully assured second feature from Argentine filmmaker Alexis Dos Santos (Glue, 2006) is an enveloping tale of two solitary ex-pats, wayward young souls crossing paths in the cosmopolitan art-rock entrepot of a sprawling East London squat. Twenty-year-old Axl (played with a striking, reckless innocence by a superb Fernando Tielve) has come from South America to find his long-lost English father. Raised traveling, Axl’s rootlessness has become a restless way of life. He drinks himself into forgetting at night, awaking like a promiscuous foundling among another set of nonchalant hosts and lovers. Meanwhile, posing as a student in need of housing, he hires his realtor father, but hovers on the edge of revealing himself. Vera (an achingly vulnerable, gently arch Déborah François) is a wounded French-speaking beauty who oozes continental ennui at her bookstore job (where she’s not above discouraging a customer from buying a book she finds ridiculous), while responding to a stranger’s flirtation by pursuing a strictly nameless affair—wrapping caution and control in adventure and mystery, only to find herself falling (like him) desperately in love. Visceral yet dreamlike, Unmade Beds lolls moodily and infectiously in a commandingly fluid visual style, heightened by a stirring soundtrack featuring cameos by a handful of contemporary UK bands. When Axl and Vera finally meet, the encounter is both decidedly low-key and deeply resonant, a drunken tête-à-tête between strangers wearing costume animal heads. It is Dos Santos’ sly, pitch-perfect nod to both our most basic natures as well as the masks we hide them behind.

Written by Alexis Dos Santos. Photographed by Jakob Ihre. With Deborah Francois, Fernando Tielve, Michiel Huisman, Iddo Goldberg, Richard Lintern (92 min, The Bureau Film Company).

Film only tickets are $20 for SFFS Members and $25 for non-members. Film and party tickets are $60 for SFFS Members and $75 for non-members. VIP film and party tickets are $125 and include reserved seating in the theater and access to the exclusive VIP lounge at the afterparty. Tickets are on sale to Film Society members whose memberships are valid through the end of the Festival.

Castro Theatre with afterparty at Mezzanine
Thursday, May 7, 7:00 pm