David
Pure Phase
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:33 am Posts: 34865 Location: Maryland
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Re: Le Week-End
Over the course of his career, director Roger Michell has navigated from independent films to big-budget, star-driven studio productions, the mode often signaled by which side of the Atlantic he is on: in Britain, his films, including Enduring Love and Venus, tend to have more grit and melancholia, while his stateside output tends toward the streamlined and uplifting, as evidenced by Morning Glory. Le Week-End, his latest film and one of his most charming, spirits him to continental Europe (Paris, to be precise), and the result is a simple, but satisfying blend of the biting and the sweet.
Jim Broadbent and the almost always undervalued Lindsay Duncan star as a Birmingham couple drifting apart after three decades together. He is a university star turned mediocre academic, haunted by his failure to become the significant novelist and counterculture wit many thought he could. She, too, is a teacher and has grown bored with her static domestic existence and now longs for adventure, any adventure. In an eleventh-hour bid to ignite their disintegrating union, they travel to Paris, where they wine, dine, stay at a luxurious hotel beyond their limited budget, and otherwise reflect on their shared life and whether it is worth preserving. Both leads shine, convincing the audience this is a long-term couple with a well-defined vocabulary of nostalgia and resentment they easily wield to please or hurt one another. Screen presences this natural, this honest, can be hard to achieve, but the pro duo are well-matched and game. With its detailed use of urban European locations and dialogue-driven slice-of-romantic-life nature, Le Week-End at its best plays as a minor, but delightful twilight-years variation on the Before Sunrise series. It is also laced with stylistic and thematic nods to the French New Wave, including repeated references to the iconic Band of Outsiders dance sequence, building to a memorable final shot which represents an intimate and welcome victory for pop nostalgia.
B+
_________________1. The Lost City of Z - 2. A Cure for Wellness - 3. Phantom Thread - 4. T2 Trainspotting - 5. Detroit - 6. Good Time - 7. The Beguiled - 8. The Florida Project - 9. Logan and 10. Molly's Game
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