WEEKEND
UK, 2011
Running Length:
97 minutes
Cast: Tom Cullen,
Chris New, Laura Freeman, Vauxhall Jermaine
Director: Andrew Haigh
Screenplay: Andrew
Haigh
Cinematography: Urzula
Pontikos
Weekend is a rare thing: a movie romance that feels like a
real life romance, with all the awkwardness and weirdness left intact. Russell is out, but doesn’t like to
talk about it with his largely straight friends. After an evening with them, he heads to a club and
eventually goes home with the object of his desire.
The morning after could have played out the same way most of
these awkward one night stand mornings do, but when Glen whips out a voice
recorder, and asks Russell to recount the evening in his own words, things skew
into new territory. Ostensibly an
art project, the dialogue kick starts a long, free form conversation that grows
increasingly intimate as the pair exchanger personal information, come-ons and ideas.
When Glen announces he’s moving to the US the next day, it
creates an urgency as the pair struggle to fit an entire relationship into a
weekend.
A little like Before Sunrise, this film manages to capture
the organic nature of love developing, and the place sex has within that
development. The characters are
well drawn and flawlessly performed by the two leads. Both men are presented as flawed individuals with boundaries
they will not cross. Things get interesting
as they get close to these self-imposed limits, and how each deals with them, is
a joy to behold.
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