Le Week-End

(Image credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)

Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan's long-married couple bicker and fret through a weekend in Paris in this bittersweet comedy drama

Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan's long-married couple bicker and fret through a weekend in Paris in this bittersweet comedy drama.

Broadbent's philosophy lecturer and Duncan's biology teacher are optimistically hoping to relive their honeymoon 30 years earlier but, far from reviving a stale marriage, the weekend quickly brings their relationship's tensions to the fore, strains that are only exacerbated when they run into his flamboyant old Cambridge friend (Jeff Goldblum).

A funny-sad, shrewdly observed portrait of a marriage and of the disappointed dreams and thwarted ambitions of late-middle age, this is a grown-up delight. Broadbent and Duncan are at the top of their game and Goldblum's extended cameo is terrific, too.

Hanif Kureishi sprinkles his script with plenty of quotable zingers ('Each time I take off my knickers I think there's going to be an eclipse') and director Roger Michell plays deft homage to French cinema.