Weekend

This review first appeared in the Sunday Star Times, 6th February 2012

Russell is a private, self- contained young man who stops into a nightclub on the way home from a night out with straight friends, where he picks up the spirited Glen.  The pair spend that weekend in each other’s company, talking, sharing stories, getting high and having sex.

A gay love story, yes, but not just a gay love story, for Weekend presents one of the most honestly portrayed accounts of burgeoning love in any relationship we see on the contemporary silver screen. A hundred times more real and touching than the Hollywood “rom”-coms, and less tortured than the arthouse fare whose bed it inevitably shares, the award- winning Weekend is more Before Sunset in tone than A Single Man.

Using relative newcomers as his core cast, writer/director Andrew Haigh has crafted a partly scripted, often-improvised, completely realistic interpretation of what it is to make a connection and cautiously explore how meaningful that may become.

Actors Tom Cullen and Chris New are revelations, ordinary blokes with charisma aplenty, enabling us to identify with a universal experience. It is artfully shot with long, static takes and beautifully nuanced in its study of the human condition.