Le Week-End (2013)
Cast includes: Lindsay Duncan (Under the Tuscan Sun), Jim Broadbent (Moulin Rouge!), Jeff Goldblum (The Grand Budapest Hotel)
Director: Roger Michell (Changing Lanes)
Genre: Light drama | Humor (93 minutes)
“Can’t we have lunch immediately?” Nick asks as they leave Gare du Nord. Meg and Nick are back in Paris to celebrate their 30th anniversary and they’re staying where they stayed on their honeymoon. “It’s tarted up a bit since last time,” says Meg. But it’s the room décor that puts her over the top. “It’s beige.” As she flees into a taxi, Nick can barely keep up. She takes charge of the euros and gives a sufficient amount to the driver to keep him driving… just drive. “Why don’t we stop and enjoy it?” says Nick. Finally they come to the very exclusive and expensive Fouquet Barriere Hotel, and that’s where Meg chooses to stop… “whatever it costs is fine,” she says. And just by chance, there’s a cancellation… “the suite that Tony Blair stayed in.” Perfect! And it is perfect… view of the Eiffel Tower from the balcony… it’s just divine… almost divine enough to let them forget the tiles they need to choose for the bathroom project… almost divine enough to make them forget their son wants to move back home. From their hotel suite, they fantasize about what life could be like if they chucked it all and moved to Paris. Nick has always wanted to be a writer… he settled for being a college professor.
However, it’s going to take more than a change of scenery to mend whatever’s going on in Nick and Meg’s relationship. He doesn’t even touch her without asking permission… and permission is rarely granted. “I thought we could try taking our love making to another dimension,” he says. “We could pretend to be different people.” Despite all the rough patches, Nick is still totally in love with Meg. “You always did edit out the arguments and the misery,” she says. After an especially scrumptious dinner with yummy wine, Nick is relaxed enough to confess that things aren’t going so well in his teaching job. (You really have to be so very careful what you say to students these days.) When Nick thinks about his aspirations, “I must say, I’m amazed at how mediocre I’ve turned out to be.” But here in the city of lights, there are glimmers of the Meg and Nick who fell in love over 3 decades ago. It’s at a particularly tender moments when they hear… “Nick… Nick Burroughs, is that you?”
Of all the people to run into… it’s Morgan, an old friend from Cambridge. Morgan’s just published another book… another “bad day for the English language,” as far as Nick’s concerned. Morgan lives in Paris with his new wife, and it looks like Nick and Meg’s anniversary weekend is going to take an unexpected turn. Le Week-End starts out like a film about a couple rekindling the early days of a relationship, and it certainly has elements of that. But as we learn more, the plot thickens. Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent are excellent as Meg and Nick, and Jeff Goldblum is a wonderful contrast as the larger-than-life Morgan. On the surface, it seems that Morgan has had the career success that Nick should have had. On the surface, it seems that Morgan is the one with the glamorous life… gorgeous apartment, new wife and another new baby on the way. But Nick’s never been envious of what Morgan has, because he knows that “love is harder than sex.”
3 popped kernels
Nick and Meg hope to rekindle their marriage by going back to Paris, where they spent their honeymoon 30 years ago
Popcorn Profile
Rated: R (Sexual Content)
Audience: Grown-ups
Gender Style: Sensitive
Distribution: Art House
Mood: Neutral
Tempo: In No Hurry
Visual Style: Unvarnished Realism
Nutshell: Rejuvenate a marriage
Language: True to life
