Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Le Week-End Blu-ray Movie Review

Paris is for lovers and/or married people.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 9, 2014

Some of you married readers who haven’t quite reached the thirty year anniversary mark that serves as the background to the alternately ebullient and acerbic film Le Week-End, probably have vacationed in Paris with your spouse and can attest that even the wonders and inherent romantic ambience of the City of Lights don’t always make for a stress free holiday. This deliberately small scale film may be big on the sights its characters whisk by, but its focus is intentionally intimate, detailing two people who have been with each other so long they communicate almost through telepathy. That doesn’t keep them from arguing or even occasionally engaging in more polite discourse, of course, but it’s notable that Le Week-End shies away from any overt melodrama, preferring instead to mine some rather considerable emotion out of those hushed moments that often take place between a husband and a wife, especially when they’re out in public and don’t want their dirty laundry being aired in front of complete strangers. The basic set up of Le Week-End is simplicity itself: married professors Nick (Jim Broadbent) and Meg (Lindsay Duncan) have decided to return to Paris, the place of their honeymoon some three decades past, for a weekend celebration of their anniversary. The two day jaunt ends up sparking a reexamination of their relationship, as well as bringing forth a revelation or two between them. Aside from a late entrance by Jeff Goldblum as an old college buddy of Nick’s, Le Week-End is almost entirely what theater buffs call a “two hander”, playing out nearly totally between Nick and Meg, and it’s a testament to the skill of frequent collaborators screenwriter Hanif Kureishi and director Roger Michell that the film is never less than engaging, if also at times more than a bit unsettling.

The Chunnel Train from London to Paris leaves from the elegant St. Pancras Station, which is frankly not in the best neighborhood of England’s largest city. But the train itself is a quick and surprisingly elegant way to journey between the metropolises. We first meet Nick and Meg on the train, and though they’re sitting next to each other, it’s almost immediately obvious that they’re in their own separate worlds. A seemingly straightforward discussion about who has the Euros for the trip soon devolves into whispered recriminations, leaving Nick to exit the fracas and spend the rest of the trip in the dining car alone. Right off the bat, we’re privy to the fact that the couple has an intense—though usually surprisingly quiet—way of disagreeing with each other.

However, in one of the film’s most real feeling gambits, the two come back together again after nearly every skirmish. It’s an incredibly refreshing thing to see portrayed in a film—that real life dialectic that always springs up between a married couple, where you can argue until you’re blue in the face, but still want to remain connected to your “nemesis”. Unfortunately, things don’t initially go very well for the two once they get to Paris. Nick has booked them back in the boutique hotel they stayed in 30 years previously, but things are—obviously—not the same anymore, and Meg does not behave well once she sees how different things really are. In the first of several impulsive moves on her part, she takes off, with Nick scrambling after her, hailing a taxi and littering the driver with Euros to take them on a sightseeing tour of the city. During that tour, she spots an incredibly luxe hotel that she marches in to, plopping her credit card down on the counter and informing the clerk that cost is no issue. Initially it seems that there isn’t any room, but in a moment they’re told that a lavish suite, one once inhabited by none other than Tony Blair, is available. Throwing caution to the wind, Meg checks them in, even though Nick is more and more upset about how much everything is going to cost.

That concern turns out to have an underlying cause which is only divulged in a sudden burst of honesty, something this couple tends to do with each other in between bouts of arguing and equally brief moments of relative calm. This may seem like an odd pattern for those who have either not been married very long or indeed at all, but it rings true, though perhaps could have been better delineated with a bit more development in terms of providing backstory, especially for Meg, who seems awfully bitter about something. That tendency is seen in a couple of intentionally shudder producing moments concerning the couple's sex lives in one of Le Week-End's most provocative elements.

The film traverses a bunch of vignettes, with the couple sightseeing and doing things like eating in restaurants. Meg gets a sudden burst of risk taking and convinces Nick to participate in a bit of “senior dine and dash”, an element which is mirrored in the film’s closing moments, and which frankly doesn’t jibe all that well with either the comedic or the melancholic aspects of the film. Jeff Goldblum’s arrival hints at providing some context, since he plays a successful writer who once idolized Nick back in their college days, but instead of really providing any meaningful history, a dinner party he holds simply affords the couple one last round of recriminations and, possibly, salvation.

One of the film’s oddest but potentially most endearing aspects (at least for lovers of the French New Wave) is a little riff of sorts where Meg and Nick occasionally break into The Madison, a dance that was also utilized in Godard’s Band of Outsiders. In that film, it offered a rare moment of camaraderie in some otherwise fractured relationships. Here, where Nick and Meg bounce back and forth from argument to reconciliation, it may serve as nothing other than a visual metaphor for that dance called marriage. Like married couples, The Madison requires both individuality and team work.

Le Week-End Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Le Week-End is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Music Box Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Shot digitally utilizing the Arri Alexa, Le Week-End is just a bit softer at times than many similarly shot features, and it also tends to tamp down the palette, playing out in shades of beige and (especially in wide shots featuring the whole of Paris) white. That said, the image here is completely stable and close-ups offer excellent fine detail, revealing everything from the down on Duncan's face to the deep crags on Broadbent's. Contrast is strong, though there are a number of quite dark scenes in the film that don't provide a wealth of shadow detail. There are no issues of video noise or other compression artifacts on display.

Le Week-End Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Le Week-End features two nice sounding lossless tracks, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. The 5.1 track offers substantially more ambient surround activity and also provides a much more spacious soundfield for the absolutely charming jazz inflected score by Jeremy Sams (think "So What" era Miles Davis with muted trumpet). Everything is cleanly and clearly presented and very nicely prioritized with wonderful fidelity and no problems of any kind to report.

Le Week-End Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Feature Commentary with Director Roger Michell and Producer Kevin Loader is filled with a lot of typically dry British humor, but provides a lot of technical data on the shoot, as well as some fun anecdotal reminiscences.


• A Weekend in Paris: Making Le Week-End (1080p; 15:40) is an above average EPK featuring some great interviews. Keep your eye on Michell and Kureishi, who have the makings of a great comedy duo.


• Set Illustrations by Jane Webster (1080p)


• How to Dance "The Madison" (1080p; 3:06) offers both a tutorial and some dubious philosophical ruminations about what the line dance means in both this film and Godard's Band of Outsiders.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:11)

Le Week-End Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm not completely sure Le Week-End is quite as deep as it may seem, but that hardly matters when one takes into consideration the sheer breathless truth that emanates from the performances of Broadbent and Duncan. The film is a bit too discursive for its own good, talking around issues rather than confronting them head on, but that's part and parcel of the way this couple communicates. That old adage says "love conquers all", but Nick and Meg are still fighting back to various degrees. Highly recommended.