Le Week-End

**Spoiler Alert**

Roger Michell's resume is a hit and miss history; a comedy gem like Notting-Hill is counter-balanced with drek like Morning Glory. Le Week-End is a more ambitious film and one that one might like for its performances but otherwise come away unimpressed. Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan play a couple whose marriage is in need of dire rehabilitation. The pair choose Paris for a weekend getaway and on a very limited budget, as becomes abudantly clear in the course of the story. The two bicker and snarl and seem better suited to divorce rather than reconciliation. Enter Jeff Goldblum. His character, once a school chum of Broadbent's, meets the unhappy couple serendipitously on a Parisian street and invites the two for a dinner the very next night. The two approach the party with trepidation, Broadbent anxious about the meeting while his career, his life and his marriage are a mess and Duncan, whose insecurity about her desirability finds Goldblum's flirtatiousness dangerously appealing. This is particularly vexing to Broadbent, whose neediness finds expression in the couple's homelife, as its revealed he literally follows his wife around the house; afraid of losing her and being alone. Needless to say the party serves as a Waterloo for the pair. Broadbent finds himself disclosing his dismissal as a professor, his marital crisis and his inability to have people want him around in a cringe-inducing dinner toast. Though Goldblum sees his friend as something heroic; someone who once inspired him, Broadbent has become full of self-doubt, diminished self-worth and hypocritical, as his dimissal from his professorial position is the result of making a racist statement to a student--something out of character for his leftist-leaning school activism he once shared with Goldblum. The party's outcome neatly wraps-up all the marital woes though the couple's habit of skipping out on checks thoughout the movie continues. They escape a sizeable hotel bill then attempt the same in a cafe, where they finally appeal to Goldblum for rescue; bringing what are metaphors for the couple's longing for daring and risk to a welcome end. The audience present at the screening seemed unimpressed. I enjoyed it somewhat for the performances and for images of Paris, which I never seem to tire of. Godard's Band of Outsiders is the film's thematic touchstone. The three actors even re-create the dance routine from Godard's film in the Le Week-End's final shot. La Week-End isn't groundbreaking or compelling, but it's a respectable effort.