Directed by Andrew Haigh. Starring Tom Cullen, Chris New. Club, QFT, Belfast; IFI, Dublin, 86 min
THE MOVIEVERSE is all a-flutter over Andrew Haigh's remarkable debut feature. A low-budget Yorkshire vérité(aka "the gay Brief Encounter") has been clocking up headlines from the New York Timesto its Los Angeles equivalent and every place in between. Back in Blighty, Haigh has commanded lyrical notices as the exciting new voice of British cinema.
Should we believe the hype? Too right, we should. A small, perfectly formed romance between a sweet, puppyish introvert and a charismatic queer provocateur, Weekendreminds us that gay cinema doesn't have to exist in a Gay Town ghetto.
When unassuming Russell (Tom Cullen) meets out-there extrovert Glen (Chris New) in a tacky Leeds saloon, there’s no reason to hope for anything more than a post- nightclub fumble. Glen, we soon learn, is commitment-phobic and scheduled to depart for Portland, Oregon within days. Russell, in turn, seems to embody the very opposite of Glen’s “well, the straights are all shoving it down our throats” sensibility.
But then they get talking. They go to a funfair. They talk some more. They smoke some weed. They talk. They chill out on the couch. They keep talking. Taking cues from Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise,the endless lively banter and Haigh's deceptively low-key kitchen-sink rhythms work to recreate the sensation of falling in love.
The Aristotelian constraints of watching two guys yakking over two days never tell on the material. Rather, the intimacy of small flats and close camerawork provide a winning frame around two uncannily “real” performances.
Size does and doesn’t matter. A grander scale or larger cast could only have hurt and dwarfed such a delicate construction. It requires a tight focus and a comfy sense of communion for the dialectical duo’s emotional battle scars, hidden depths and secrets to emerge. Once they do, it would take a hardened and homophobic heart of stone not to succumb.
Bring on this year's reissue of
It's a Wonderful Life – Weekend'sleft us jonsing for weepies.
