Review: Weekend is the year's best romance

I find myself in struggling to aptly communicate my deep admiration for writer-director Andrew Haigh’s Weekend.  My immediate inclination is to declare it “the best straight romance I’ve seen in at least five years,” but the use of “straight romance” is misleading and could be unfortunately misconstrued as nastily ironic.  What I mean to say is, Weekend is the best romance I’ve seen in quite some time that isn’t somehow tied to or more accurately defined by including another genre, such as the sci-fi romance of WALL-E, the fantasy romance of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or the romantic comedy of (500) Days of Summer.  Weekend is a bold movie, one that claims the romance genre for the homosexual community without winking at the audience or trying to subdue the gay-ness of the story into hetero forms.  Instead, Haigh presents a deeply moving, often funny, and strangely comfortable romance that needs to be seen.

While Weekend doesn’t have any obvious extra-generic concerns, it is something of a subtle issue movie.  There aren’t any civil rights marches or gay marriages in the story, and the characters aren’t activists in any concrete, typical way, but the film makes a powerful statement about the way the homosexual community is forced to recede in public due to the discomfort it may cause passers-by.  Glen (Chris New) bemoans the way straight people can so candidly discuss their sexual misadventures and conquests in public, often quite graphically, without coming off as being terribly inappropriate or disgusting.  Sure, some eyebrows may be raised, but there’s a much higher capacity for permissive snickers than in a similar situation involving a gay man.  It’s a truth that Russell (Tom Cullen) knows well, being subjected to the graphic story telling of his coworkers on his lunch break.

Weekend defies this social expectation.  Whereas other “mainstream” gay movies such as Brokeback Mountain, The Kids Are All Right, and I Love You Phillip Morris have all shied away from showing anything too gay (that may seem a shocking assertion at first, but I assure you, none of those films would’ve been as widely seen if they were bolder, and none of them were that widely seen as it is), Weekend dips into the forward cinematic language any straight romance would feel free to employ and even wield.  Instead of obscuring sexual acts with props or via cinematographic means, Haigh presents Russell and Glen’s romance as frankly and unassumingly as any hetero coupling you’ve ever seen on the big screen.  It’s a refreshingly normal approach to a relationship that would normally be handled with special gloves, treated as taboo subject matter even as those involved in the film would claim to be doing anything but.

This honest treatment allows Weekend to be the first gay romance that plays completely sincerely and unapologetically.  (Though I admire the movies I mentioned above, and even count Brokeback Mountain as one of my very favorite films.)  Weekend has no need for an asterisk next to its generic label, no warning or explanation.  It’s a story about two people who find love for a too-brief period of time, and how amazing it is that they managed to do so.

As in any romance, perhaps the film’s greatest appeal comes from its two leads and the perfect chemistry they have.  Tom Cullen plays Russell, a sweet romantic who hides in plain sight, not necessarily closeted but also unwilling to fully claim his identity, even though he has a network of friends and family who are ready and willing to love and support him.  When Russell spots Glen in the bar, his best move is to follow him into the bathroom and eye him at the urinal, too shy to approach him on the dance floor and thus becoming Hobbit-bait.

Chris New gives Glen a magnetic confidence and swagger as a sort-of artist who records testimonials from the men he spends the night with (an exercise Russell observes in his own way, as well).  The morning-after scene in which Russell takes his turn at the mic, describing the night before, the thrill of the hunt, the disappointment at being Glen’s second choice, is perhaps the film’s best, giving the characters such clear definition and thus making their budding relationship all the more meaningful as they extend beyond their preconceived notions of themselves and what they want from each other.  Rarely does an on-screen couple radiate such passion; it’s truly a gift to witness such natural, believable chemistry.

It’s hard to remember the last time I was so deeply moved by a movie, perhaps because of how relevant and timely Weekend is in the wake of all the horrific bullying and teen suicides.  While it’s doubtful Haigh conceived the story as a message to troubled tends, I’m sure he wouldn’t resist the message that naturally emerges from the beautifully-wrought story: it gets better.  While Russell and Glen don’t find a perfect romance, they find such glowing moments of happiness together that it’s impossible not to feel hopeful and even blissful during the film’s final bittersweet scene.