LE WEEK-END (UNITED KINGDOM)

This enchanting film was the darling of the 49th Chicago International Film Festival.  Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent give luminous performances as a British couple venturing to Paris to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary; on the surface, this seemingly well-matched pair banter, flirt as only those who have lived, studied each other’s foibles, idiosyncrasies, insecurities; a lifetime vocation in adjusting, compromising, respecting and hopefully still evolving.

Lindsay Duncan’s depiction of schoolteacher “Meg” throbs with intelligence, sensuality, rivaling Helen Mirren as “Sofya Tolstoy” in “The Last Station”; women in their sixties, pulsating firebrands, igniting the screen with seasoned, nurtured passion; their aura electrifying; men a generation their junior, succumbing .  Meg’s frustrations are slowly revealed through brilliant writing (Hanif Kureishi) and a superb interpretation by Duncan. Broadbent, (in the finest role of his lengthy career) is sublime as the beleaguered, diminished professor “Nick”; recognizing the potency, vibrancy, dazzlingly  alive in his wife; his palpable love and profound fear of losing her, portents a fissure in their thirty -year bond. 

Jeff Goldblum makes a glib, suave entrance as an old student/colleague of Nick’s; “Morgan” has scaled the heights of prosperity; living in one of Paris’s costliest arrondissements; a book destined for mega sales; a gorgeous, pregnant wife; tangibility’s, trophies resonating with society’s applause. 

“Le Week-End” directed by Roger Michell is wonderful, fulfilling fun; something glorious waiting to be snatched at the end of the rainbow; the body might wither, atrophy, but the heart is lastingly young; dancing, laughing, loving with the agility and munificence of a twenty-year-old.

FOUR & 1/2 SRARS!!!!

Peneflix