Week­end

Pow­ered by a refresh­ing­ly hon­est approach to its sub­ject mat­ter and two remark­ably nat­u­ral­is­tic lead per­for­mances, Andrew Haigh’s inti­mate dra­ma fol­lows two gay men who form an unex­pect­ed­ly close rela­tion­ship fol­low­ing what is expect­ed to be a one-night stand.

Rus­sell and Glen (new­com­ers Tom Cullen and Chris New) meet in a gay bar one evening lead­ing to them spend­ing the night with each oth­er. But while their time togeth­er is ini­tial­ly writ­ten off as lit­tle more than a chance encounter, over the course of a week­end the duo begin to dis­cov­er a deep­er con­nec­tion, lead­ing to what was ini­tial­ly intend­ed as a brief fling spi­ralling into some­thing much more significant.

Some­thing of a chal­leng­ing sell to main­stream audi­ences per­haps, Weekend’s appeal lies not in its explo­ration of gay themes, but in its com­pelling­ly accu­rate por­tray­al of fledg­ling romance. While Haigh’s film posi­tions its focus on the con­tem­po­rary gay expe­ri­ence, its obser­va­tions about the awk­ward­ness asso­ci­at­ed with forg­ing new rela­tion­ships are entire­ly universal.

Any­one who has ever gone through the expe­ri­ence of ini­ti­at­ing a rela­tion­ship is like­ly to find some­thing to relate to, an impres­sive feat giv­en the large major­i­ty of main­stream dra­mas that try but utter­ly fail to engage audi­ences in this regard.

Weekend’s infre­quent but often brac­ing­ly graph­ic sex­u­al imagery may appear con­fronta­tion­al to some, but this is arguably Haigh’s inten­tion, giv­en that the film’s under­ly­ing mes­sage is effec­tive­ly one that ral­lies against prej­u­diced het­ero­sex­u­al atti­tudes to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in pop­u­lar cul­ture. It’s an admirable approach cer­tain­ly, and one done in a suf­fi­cient­ly under­stat­ed way so as to appeal to a wider audience.

The end result is an assured piece of work that pro­vides an astute depic­tion of gay life while admirably avoid­ing the pit­falls of dat­ed stereo­types to tell an authen­tic and believ­able love story.