Le Week End

Plot

Nick (Jim Broadbent) and Meg Burrows (Lindsay Duncan) are a married academic couple from Birmingham advancing in age and tension. To mark their 30th wedding anniversary, the two embark on a trip to the place they honeymooned three decades before: Paris. Hoping to rejuvenate their marriage, the couple arrives in Paris only for things not to go as planned. Eventually, the two bump into Morgan (Jeff Goldblum), with whom Nick went to university and who is now a successful writer, and attend a dinner party of his that ultimately opens up a new view of life and love for the aging couple.

Cast

Reception

Le Week-End received positive reviews upon its release. Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 89% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 123 reviews with a "Certified Fresh" rating, with an average score of 7.4/10. The site's consensus states: "Topped with bittersweet humor but possessing surprisingly thorny depths, Le Week-End offers a sophisticated, well-acted portrait of late-life struggles and long-term marriage." On Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 based on reviews from critics, the film has a score of 74 (citing "generally favourable") based on 27 reviews.

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, stating, "This fourth collaboration between director Roger Michell and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi is pleasurably supple in its mood shifts between droll verbal comedy and penetrating emotional truth. While not without touches of precious affectation, the film is imbued with an engaging mix of warmth and prickliness by the lovely, lived-in performances of Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan." Dennis Harvey of Variety also praised the direction, writing, and lead performances calling the film a "bittersweet, charming [...] display of keenly intelligent craftsmanship on all levels [that] should appeal to the same mature audiences that embraced the creators’ 2006 Venus."