Le Week-End
Director: Roger Michell
Writer: Hanif Kureishi
Cast: Lindsay Duncan, Jim Broadbent, Jeff Goldblum

Plot:
Meg (Lindsay Duncan) and Nick (Jim Broadbent) have been married for a long time. They’ve decided to go to Paris where they honeymooned way back when, to spend time with each other and to rekindle their relationship a little bit. What looks like an utterly romantic idea and a wonderful weekend, soon starts to crack as tensions between the two of them become apparent.

I think that Le Week-End might have worked fantastically well as a 20 minute short. At feature length it felt thin and became tedious, despite its many good qualities.

Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent were really wonderful in the film. Not only do they really breathe life into Meg and Nick, it’s their relationship that is the outstanding part. It feels as if they had actually spent the last 40 years with each other.

Though that’s not only due to their acting abilities, but also to Hanif Kureishi’s script. He knows how to make them tear into each other, show their intimacy, their frustration and their love.

But it got tiring to watch them hack at each other, to watch their relationship fray. Jeff Goldblum brought a little relief (and he was wonderful. There are way too few movies with Jeff Goldblum) but he wasn’t in it enough to really be a counterweight.

If the film had been shorter, it might not have had this grueling effect on me. But I have a low tolerance for watching people being mean to each other. And despite their good moments, that was the main dynamic for me in this relationship. I didn’t want to watch that.

Summarizing: Didn’t work for me.