Le Week-End
As a proud to be singleton, I can often find much joy in the relationships of others. With just the smidgen of jealousy, I love overseeing the love and the passion of people that dedicate a good proportion of their soul to entwine with another. Many times throughout a pairing, there can be moments of doubt, dullness or frailty. But a truly strong love can shine beauty and perfection, coming from the trembling soul with all its courage and rawness.
A good film is able to convey this with simplicity and compelling magnificence. It’s intellectual enough to get to the centre of a relationship, of two people trying to live completely together.
One of last year’s 2013 drama Le Week-End. Starring Jim Broadbent and Lindsey Duncan, it revolves around a couple who have absconded to Paris for a weekend to rejuvenate a memory of when they were younger. Married for a long time, they have been through ups and downs especially with their son living off their money and their jobs in jeopardy. However, with the bustling sites of Paris, the possibilities of re-living their youth and trying to reconnect with one another. But can the holiday make their relationship stronger, or will it tear them apart?
The honest and earnest nature of Le Week-End is strength on the writing and direction from Roger Mitchell that gives the Le Week-End a higher amount of humanity to the proceedings. Rather than focusing on one aspect of the couple, perhaps tearing them apart at the beginning for the movie to then bring them back together, Mitchell puts their relationship under a microscope and finds balance between the anger, rage, love and compassion. This builds the film into a rather absorbing affair. It never teeters too much into quaintness and becoming bogged down by typical “finding yourself” romance. Instead, it feels, well, normal in its gorgeous depths.
It helps that there is a rambunctious and intense chemistry between Duncan and Broadbent. The acting talent that has quite rightly given fame to the latter and slowly burned with the former unites with this sparkling relationship. Layering their unique styles, between the stoic yet cheeky Nick and the bitter but free spirited Meg. Together Duncan and Broadbent shines. It’s because of them that Le Week-end really pulls through and throw in a random part for Jeff Goldblum (a couples recent wedding pictures prove that Goldblum is a welcome surprise anywhere ,) and the movie becomes this deftly handled, wonderful piece of drama.
Le Week-End has this smart and stirring end. It’s so ingeniously simple but it works coming from Duncan’s lips and it is so moving that it ties the film into this fitting end. It’s not a perfect film, it drags a little in the middle. But in the end, it boils with this unnerving love and completely fantastic couple that transcends their age and cause raucous moments throughout the movie. Utterly splendid and ending on this fresh high, Le Week-End is brilliant. It’s le piece de resistance. Voila!