Ben Hecking steps out from behind the camera, his day job being a cinematographer on various shorts and low budget feature films, to direct only his second feature. His first being the little known Provenance back in 2017.
Set in London , Up On The Roof is a charming low budget rom-com starring Piotr Adamcyk, a Polish television and stage actor whose main claim to fame being that his portrayal of Pope John Paul II in the film “Karol, A Man Who Became Pope” was seen by eight hundred million people worldwide, sadly I wasn’t one of them, and Natalia Gastiain Tena who, as well as appearing in the recent John Wick 4, is perhaps best known for playing Nymphadora Tonks in the Harry Potter film series.
The story, as in most rom-coms, is simple. We first meet Polish chef Stefan (Adamcyk) as a young man working in a London café where he meets and falls in love with Emily (Tena). After a whirlwind romance which we are privy to thanks to the obligatory video montage with a musical soundtrack of the time to accompany it, the pair drift apart.
Now, fifteen years later Stefan is older, still single, works in the same café and stays with a group of friends in some sort of warehouse apartment. Whilst Emily, who has drifted between various relationships, is still staying with her mother (Deborah Findlay) who has more get up and go than she has.
After a chance meeting at an airport the pair rekindle their love and we follow the pair through various ups and downs to an eventual ending that will come as no surprise to lovers of this type of film.
Predicable, as most rom-coms are, and certainly low budget there is a certain likability to Hecking’s film. This is perhaps down in no small part to charismatic performances from Adamcyk and Tena who together manage to add a touch of sparkle to something that otherwise could have been oh so dull.
Up On The Roof is certainly not the best rom-com that there’s ever been but with so many bleak and dull films filling up our cinemas at the moment anything that attempts to put a smile on your faces and a spring in your step is certainly worth giving up 90 minutes of your time for.