Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 195: Tue Jul 15

Le Week-end (Michell, 2013): Riverside Studios, 7.30pm


Writer Hanif Kureshi will be at this cinema for a Q&A after the screening.

Time Out review:
After ‘The Mother’ and ‘Venus’, this is the third collaboration between ‘Notting Hill’ director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi. It’s their strongest yet, and once again they offer a late-life dash for love and happiness. ‘Le Week-End’ tells of Nick (Jim Broadbent) and Meg (Lindsay Duncan), a married couple who head to Paris for a break, but find themselves facing up to personal and professional ennui. It’s lightly played, often very funny and shot all over Paris with energy and wit, and boosted by superb, inquiring turns from Broadbent and Duncan. It deals head-on with its sad-faced subject without leaning on sentimentality or misery, or offering easy answers. Michell and Kureishi insert a winning dose of magic into the realism in the form of Morgan (Jeff Goldblum), a wealthy old friend that the couple bump into. The meeting inspires an awkward, near-surreal dinner-party scene and allows Michell to close the film with an uplifting nod to Godard’s ‘Bande à Part’. Delightful.
Dave Calhoun




Here (and above) is the trailer.

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