Tonight You're Mine
sounds like a threat. Ostensibly a
free-wheeling indie romance, by the time the film reaches its climax, the
implications of that threat come into full view "“ and it's already grating
beforehand. Adam (Luke Treadaway)
is the lead singer/token hot dude in a popular electro-pop duo called The Make,
and Morello (Natalie Tena) is the singer/keyboardist in an all-girl punk group
that does not resemble any form of punk, post-punk, hardcore, post-hardcore, or
any variation thereof. The bands
are fake, but the music festival where the groups are performing, Scotland's T
in the Park, is not. Within five
minutes of the film's opening, long before we have a chance to get to know who
these people are, a mysterious festival worker handcuffs them together during
an argument.
From here, the film meanders through poorly semi-improvised
non-situations. The feeling is
akin to wandering up to a group of people and attempting to chat, but they
never acknowledge your existence and continue to participate in their own
established rapport and in-jokes.
It's a distancing effect that doesn't seem to have been intentional, and
the fact that Adam and Morello's romance feels more like emotionally violent sexual
coercion probably wasn't either.
Yes, Adam is a supreme creep who berates and alienates Morello's banker
boyfriend to the point that he takes off so he can have his way with her. No, it's not supposed to read like
that, but the film's explanation that the power of music brings them together
doesn't hold up. Instead, Adam
comes off as reprehensible and Morello an abuse victim.
That Tonight You're
Mine is chaotically disorganized and underwritten would make it a troubled
but admirable experiment "“ the film was shot in a few days during the actual T
in the Park festival of 2011.
That's a bold way to produce a film, but Adam's reprehensible behavior
inadvertently turns this so-called romance into an ugly, discomforting mess.
