Le Week-End

Jim Broadbent Director: Roger Michell Roger Michell

Overview

Director Roger Michell's Le Weekend stars Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as Nick and Meg, a British couple celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary with a weekend getaway in Paris. As they travel around the city, they revisit the highs and lows of their relationship, fight about their faults, and continue to run out of restaurants without paying the bill. They meet up with an old colleague of Nick's and attend a dinner party at his house, leading to some painful truths being spoken aloud. Jeff Goldblum co-stars in this romantic drama that screened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/08/2014
UPC:	0741360538450
Original Release:	2013
Rating:	R
Source:	Music Box Films
Time:	1:33:00
Sales rank:	43,934

Special Features

Feature Commentary with Director Roger Michell and Producer Kevin Loader; A Weekend in Paris: Making Le-Week-end; Includes interviews with Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Goldblum, Director Roger Michell and Writer Hanif Kureishi; "How To Do 'The Madison'" dance tutorial; Illustrations by Jane Webster; Theatrical trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jim Broadbent	Nick Burrows
Lindsay Duncan	Meg Burrows
Jeff Goldblum	Morgan
Olly Alexander	Michael
Judith Davis	Eve
Igor Gotesman	Montemartre Receptionist
Olivier Audibert	Taxi Driver
Sophie-Charlotte Husson	Plaza Receptionist
Etienne Dalibert	Hotel Porter
Mauricette Laurence	Old Lady in Church
Gabriel Mailhebiau	Chez Dumonet Waiter
Violaine Baccon	Girl on Motorbike
D. Damien Favereau	La Dame de Pic Maitre
Deborah Amselem	Hotel Shop Assistant
Stéphane De Fraia	Waiter at Morgan's Apartment
Brice Beaugier	Robert Ertel
Charlotte Leo	Dominique Ertel
Xavier De Guillebon	Jean-Pierre Degremont
Marie-France Alvarez	Victoire La Chapelle
Lee Michelsen	Harry Rose
Denis Sebbah	Christopher Aragües
Sébastien Siroux	Valentin Lefevre
Julie Descarpentrie	Waitress
Nicolas Carpentier	Plaza Security Guard
Scali Delpeyrat	Plaza Hotel Manager

Technical Credits

Hanif Kureishi

Roger Michell	Director
Emma Annetts	Choreography
Valerie Aragues	Asst. Director
Cécile Arlet	Art Director
Louisa Dent	Executive Producer
Emmanuelle Duplay	Production Designer
Nathalie Durand	Cinematographer
Bertrand Faivre	Co-producer
Danny Hambrook	Sound/Sound Designer
Karen Hartley	Makeup
Kristina Hetherington	Editor
Philip Knatchbull	Executive Producer
Hanif Kureishi	Screenwriter
Kevin Loader	Producer
Tushar Manek	Sound Mixer
Jeremy Sams	Score Composer
Alice Searby	Casting
Sue Bruce Smith	Executive Producer
Fiona Weir	Casting

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- Le Week-End
1. Chapter 1 [10:00]
2. Chapter 2 [9:59]
3. Chapter 3 [10:00]
4. Chapter 4 [9:59]
5. Chapter 5 [10:00]
6. Chapter 6 [9:59]
7. Chapter 7 [10:00]
8. Chapter 8 [9:59]
9. Chapter 9 [9:07]
10. Chapter 10 [4:25]
11. Chapter 11 [:02]

Menu

Disc #1 -- Le Week-End
   Chapters

Editorial Reviews

Director Roger Michell scored one of the biggest hits of his career with Venus, which garnered Peter O'Toole an Oscar nomination for his performance as an elderly man who falls in love with a much younger woman. For Le Week-End, Michell evens the age gap by focusing on a 30th anniversary weekend trip for a husband and wife trying to figure out if they still love each other. Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan play Nick and Meg, a British couple celebrating three decades of marriage with an impromptu weekend getaway to Paris. What should be a happy occasion is marred by their frequent bickering, current financial troubles, and the surprise appearance of a former colleague of Nick's (played by Jeff Goldblum), a fellow professor whose easy charm and loquaciousness is at odds with the couple's natural British reserve. As the two flirt, fight, laugh, and insult one another, both come to a point where they have to face up to their own insecurities and how they have hurt each other. Like his other films, Michell's tone here is laid-back. His camera is resolutely unobtrusive -- he gives you the feeling that he's observing more than showing -- and the best moments in Le Week-End have a documentary-like air to them, as if he really had captured a longtime couple fighting about sex, money, and infidelity. At its best, the movie feels like a preview of how Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke might follow up Before Midnight. Broadbent and Duncan are a perfect match, both for each other and for this material. With his low-key charisma, Broadbent has the advantage of always seeming like a normal human being. The moments here when he tries in vain to make his wife laugh so she'll stop being mad ring as true as the lacerating monologue in the third act in which he lays his self-doubt bare. Duncan's character is more direct and seemingly colder, and while she does nothing to make you think differently about Meg during the film's opening act, there's a slow and subtle reveal of exactly how and why this woman has constructed her own defense mechanisms to deal with her disappointments in her husband and herself. The performances are wonderful: The leads and Goldblum are a pleasure to watch. However, the picture has almost no dramatic tension because the scenes in which the couple fight are so casual and believable that we're not necessarily invested in seeing them work it out -- they might be better off away from each other. The film is so charmingly slight that its weightlessness makes it seem inconsequential. It's a movie where you don't necessarily care what happens next, but you don't mind hanging out with the characters for a little while longer.

All Movie Guide - Perry Seibert