Film Reviews

Weekend

• Rating:
• Director: Andrew Haigh
• Starring: Chris New
• Details: UK / 97 mins (TBC)

In outline, Andrew Haigh's indie-romance flick is simple: boy meets boy; boy beds boy; boys discuss the intricacies of love, sex and identity over and over for two days. But though Weekend is based around a same-sex couple, the film is wonderfully inclusive, addressing universal themes. Haigh doesn't merely present the audience with a snapshot of gay life – his film is an upended jigsaw that allows the audience to pick out the pieces of struggle, confusion, loneliness, infatuation, romance and hope expressed by the characters and fit them within the framework of their own experience.
Twenty-something Russell (Tom Cullen) is out, but not yet proud. Sneaking out to a gay bar one night, he picks up Glen (Chris New), expecting an uncomplicated one-night stand. But when his budding artist bed-buddy asks him to talk about their night together as part of an art project, a Pandora's Box of emotion and longing is opened. During a weekend of parties, sex, drink and drugs, the men discuss love, sex, coming out, family, monogamy and the gap between the façade that they present to the world and who they really are.
It's impossible to heap too much praise on the two leads, whose natural performances prove mesmerizing, even as their characters do nothing. As Russell, Cullen brings a wonderful, sad-eyed longing to the shy and romantic character, while New imbues Glen with a self-consciously confrontational edge. Though he seems the more confident of the two, perpetually waving an invisible rainbow flag, his constant political battles betray a man who has somewhat lost his identity to his sexuality. As he says himself, with labels, “everything becomes cemented.”
Peeking at the couple through crowds and closely shooting their increasingly revealing conversations, Haigh creates a wonderful sense of intimacy that's heightened by the raw and realistic visuals. There's no idealism to Russell and Glen's conversations, which overflow with youthful arrogance, swearing and defensive humour. Similarly, the sex isn't the soft-focus, flatteringly lit back-arching favoured by Hollywood humpers. But the full-frontal nudity and unapologetic realism prove Haigh's point: sex and romance are never perfect. Perfect is intangible. What's real, attainable - and here, perfectly realized - is something more clumsily beautiful.
In this wise, current and gorgeously crafted emotional gem of a film, Russell and Paul fall in love and get their hearts broken over the course of a weekend. This film will do the same to you in an hour and a half.

Review by Roe McDermott