Starring: Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Goldblum
Philosophy professor Nick Burrows (Jim Broadbent) and his wife Meg (Duncan), a teacher, go away together for a weekend getaway in Paris. Over the course of their time away, they take a look at their marriage and its trials and tribulations alongside the Parisian scenery.
A quiet and often understated film, Le Week-End does initially seem to lend inevitable comparisons with Richard Linklater's trilogy of Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) with the central conceit of being a romance film about two people wandering around a European city (in this case, Paris) and mostly just talking. However, Le Week-End is tonally rather different and often not shy about tackling some rather harsh home truths. Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan are both good enough actors to pull off the dramatic sequences and when Jeff Goldblum turns up, he makes for great support as an old college friend of Broadbent's (of course his performance is just Goldblum being Goldblum but when is that not entertaining?). However, the film's way of navigating between comedy and drama is a little forced and personally, I would've preferred the film to be more humorous.
Still, the film has some sweet and memorable moments that really point towards the high marks of the film and for those just wanting some solid and good acting, Le Week-End is worthwhile.
Next time, Daniel Brühl is German computer whizz Daniel Berg, who gets caught up in an information and ideological crusade with Benedict Cumberbatch who stars as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate.
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