Weekend

Film Review by Jamie Dunn | 25 Oct 2011
Film title: Weekend
Director: Andrew Haigh
Starring: Tom Cullen, Chris New
Release date: 4 Nov
Certificate: 18

Weekend is your atypical (in Movieland) boy meets boy love story. On an impromptu Friday night cruising a cheesy nightclub in unglamorous Nottingham, Russell (Cullen), a shy lifeguard with one foot in the closet, hooks up with Glen (New), a super confident artist whose hobbies include cross-examining his conquests post-coitus and squaring up to burly homophobes like a belligerent Peter Tatchell. This drunken fumble develops from butterflies-in-stomach flirtation to life altering romance as the men tentatively get to know each other over the weekend. Then the bombshell: Glen is emigrating to America on Sunday. It’s a burning fuse worthy of Hitchcock. Writer/director Haigh (Greek Pete) uses long takes, vérité visuals and crash-bang editing to craft a bittersweet romance where the dynamic between the leads is constantly in flux. Political yet never preachy, Haigh challenges the mainstream heterosexual narrative by subverting that cornerstone of hetero orthodoxy: the rom-com. The irony is, though, that Weekend is the year’s wittiest hymn to romance. [Jamie Dunn]

Weekend is released 4 Nov by Peccadillo Pictures and screens at the GFT on 25 Oct as part of Glasgay! http://www.weekend-film.com