Film Review: Weekend

Director Andrew Haigh takes us into the unassuming lives of two young, gay Englishmen for a Weekend.  As much as they would like their sexuality to be secondary in their lives—like the film—it fuels their being and relationship to each other as they struggle to exist in a world unconcerned with their struggle. 

Russell (Tom Cullen) is an introvert with a very small and tight circle of friends who makes his living as a lifeguard.  Haigh lenses his simple, regimented life rather geometrically.  Through a random late night interaction at a club, the much more extroverted artist Glen (Chris New) enters his space.  While he takes pleasure in pushing buttons and fancies himself a free spirit, when faced with the possibility of actually being loved for who he is, Glen finds expressing and experiencing his deepest feelings quite challenging.   He’s more bark than bite. 

He also has a huge gay chip on his shoulder as the film incorporates his angst and depicts what it’s like to live in a society as an ignored contingent of the population.  While it’s refreshing for the film to bypass AIDS, promiscuity and overt internal homophobia without blinking an eye, as so many gay-themed films often fall prey to thereby defining themselves, it’s far from being a post-gay film and, like the recent The Help—a sometimes Disneyfied illustration of what being a 1960’s black nanny/housekeeper was like—falls into the “dated on arrival” file.  Apparently, it's still too early for a movie about two gay men who just happen to be gay.  Industrialized societies certainly move faster technologically than they do socially, which is why it was a bit ironic that Glen should be using a cassette-tape recorder to conduct his interviews. 

Having also written the screenplay, Haigh provides a few witty moments and unfolds his story without getting too preachy and heavy-handed.  There is a pleasant quietness to his intimate approach, which makes the shameless David Bowiesque “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”- knock-off rolling over the end credits all the more jarring.  

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