Weekend

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]