By its end, Le Week-End is a film turned sour. I might comment that it depicts a relationship turned sour, but I'd be way off the mark. It's undoubtedly not trying to hit any such mark itself, to make any comment whatsoever. Even its own participants don't comment. The only person who, momentarily, offers any immediate response is the American friend's young, curly-coiffed hipster son, and that's only because it's in his nature. But that's definitely sourness you taste, subtly, gradually seeping through the shell of quaint comedy that you initially detect, and possibly only because you're expecting to detect it. It nudges away at your consciousness, eventually flipping Le Week-End 180 degrees, and you with it, unknowingly led into newer, stranger waters. Sly how Hanif Kureishi's screenplay threatens to pull that rug out from under you as you sit back, sure that he never would, only to realise, in the end, that there was never even any rug at all. Or, perhaps, the rug is there if you want it to be there. Le Week-End is a droll, charming, old-English-couple-in-Paris rom-com if you want it to be that. There's life left in this relationship if they want it to be left. What a curious, intangible truth there is in that relationship, inexplicable, unidentifiable even, possibly to its own inhabitants too. I don't think they could comment, should they even try. So neither shall I. But I shall comment that Lindsay Duncan in a fedora, twin-set, pencil skirt, tights and plimsoles is the cinematic style statement of the year.
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