"Le Week-End" Is Warm, Honest And Clever And That's Just The Critics Talking

Le week-end is sweet, it’s quirky and it has its token dose of snark – the perfect combination to warm those chilly autumn nights. To top it all off, this Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan starrer is set in Paris, adding another dose of romance to the whole affair. The affair in question is a weekend getaway for an ageing couple, which leads them to reevaluate their relationship and their lives overall.

Watch the trailer below.

So far, Roger Mitchell's film has been getting nothing short of stellar reviews. CM's own Rich Cline reviewed Le Week-End (which has been rather redundantly translated on UK posters as The Weekend,) calling it a “a rare grown-up movie about real issues we can identify with.” Besides the gorgeous shots of the Parisian landscape, which are plainly evident in the trailer, the reviews so far would suggest that there is actually plenty of depth and complexity to this story – enough to keep the viewer entertained for an hour and a half.

The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin compares this to a more mature, twenty-years-later version of Before Midnight, praising Broadbent and Duncan’s performances as sincere enough to carry the film. Collin notes that the plot “becomes unexpectedly richer the deeper you probe, like a bitter chocolate soufflé served with its centre still molten.”

The Guardian’s Catherine Shoard also praises the film’s candor, while still mentioning some of the less convincing moments. Notably, Shoard is less than impressed with the writing for Duncan’s character Meg, claiming that she wasn’t given enough motivation in the script to make her believable. “There are moments, too, when your sympathy for the couple is stretched too thin,” Shoard notes, but in the end the review concludes that even with these flaws, Le Week-End is “a work borne from, and provoking, real feeling.” If that was enough to spark your interest, the film hits UK cinemas on a limited release on November 1.