As light entertainment for grown-ups, Le Week-End has a fair amount going for it: fine lead performances from Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan, pleasant touristic views of Paris, and plenty of epigrammatic wit in the Noel Coward tradition. But fans of British screenwriter Hanif Kureishi will be seriously disappointed; this once-significant dramatist (My Beautiful Laundrette, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid) seems to have run out of meaningful things to say. The central characters—two married sixtysomething professors trying to reignite their romance on a weekend trip to Paris—voice familiar baby boomer gripes about post-60s disillusionment and even more familiar gripes about aging. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, except that Kureishi raises these stock concerns only to retreat into sentimentality and self-congratulation.
Roger Michell’s unassuming direction gives the veteran actors plenty of room, and they work wonders with the material; their rapport feels authentic, and their delivery and body language convey years of life experience. Well before one learns that Nick has been forced into early retirement, his disappointment is evident in the actor’s sunken expressions, and Duncan’s exasperated line readings hint that Meg has been considering divorce long before she blurts out the news in a moment of anger. But once the characters start explaining the sources of their unhappiness, the drama becomes less compelling, largely because their problems seem far from insurmountable: they’ve been exploited financially by their layabout son, who can’t maintain the home they’ve bought for him; they worry about what they’ll do in retirement; and Nick hates himself for giving up on his youthful political ideals and creative ambitions.
Directed by Roger Michell
