You Instead

You Instead attempts to capture the sights, sounds and smells of Britain's most rambunctious music festival, T in the Park. For the most part, it’s successful. The film centres on a will they, won’t they, (of course they will), relationship between Adam (Luke Treadaway), the cocksure, skinny jeans-wearing frontman of electronic two-piece The Make, and Morello (Natalia Tena), keyboard player for punchy, punky girl band The Dirty Pinks. There’s a palpable chemistry between the pair, on screen and on stage — both actors more than convince as rock stars.

Shot fast over five days (three of which with 85,000 revelers as extras) at last year's festival at Balado, the direction is loose and inventive as we follow the two bands and their entourage through 48hrs of flirting, fighting, partying and performing. Mackenzie’s film is not perfect: one performance is so big that it almost unbalances the second act and the decision to lumber half the UK cast with American accents seems insane considering nobody comes close to pulling one off convincingly — Gavin Mitchell's attempt is so honking it might single-handedly bring an end to 'The Special Relationship'. But as a piece of filmmaking You Instead is a bold experiment and when it works — such as an improvised mash-up of Tainted Love, an intimate mud-caked shower and a murky sunrise with a choir of seagulls — it's electric. [Jamie Dunn]