Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Goldblum, Olly Alexander, Brice Beaugier, Xavier De Guillebon, Marie-France Alvarez, Denis Sebbah, Charlotte Léo, Lee Breton Michelsen, Sébastien Siroux

Paris in all its chic and unfettered glory; what could be more enchanting and entertaining for a couple celebrating 30 years together? Perhaps not spending it in each other’s company might be a good start but then where would the romance of being together for so long be without the moments of complete and utter despondency. For the writer Hanif Kureishi to bring such a script to the table and have three beguiling leads play their part with the skill of many years in the profession must have been a dream come true and with the Parisian backdrop excelling itself, Le Week-End is a film that captures the essence and grace of growing older whilst making sure that age is no barrier to being caught being selfish, disgraceful and still desperately in love.

Swapping the delights of Moseley, Birmingham for the cultural playground of continental Europe sound perhaps on the face of it to be a great dream, after all, a weekend away in Paris is something that anybody would consider doing but there are conversations to be had, the subject of longing, of still wanting to make love to the same woman after many years together even though she has become closed-off to the wandering attentions a college tutor is one such one, the tiles for the new bathroom it seems is another.

Both Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan give absorbing performances, which is only bettered by the sight of the Paris setting, in this film which isn’t so much lost in translation but needing the code between the sexes and the passage of time deciphering with the help of the Rosetta Stone. The Director, Roger Mitchell, and the writer have cleverly combined a film which shows how the natural balance in a family can be eroded when children fly the nest and what is left is two people, no matter how fond of each other, drive their loved ones up the wall. The scene in which both of the unlikely heroes find themselves at a dinner party hosted by a fellow Cambridge student is both touching and sees Jim Broadbent give one of the finest cinematic moments of his life.

The film also stars the superb Jeff Goldblum playing very much too the type cinema audiences have come to expect over the years and with the same unmistakable and nervous magnetism. In other actors who have the same appeal as the dependable Mr Goldblum, the dinner-party scene may have appeared crass, almost mocking but with that twinkle in his eye that has won over many a cinema audience, Jeff Goldblum simply poises the yin and yang nature of his to British co-stars superbly.

Whilst many this autumn will have been quite rightly raving about Rush and Blue Jasmine as worthy Oscar nominated films, if Le Week-End isn’t at least mentioned in the same breath for its direction and simple and yet brutally and lovingly honest story line, then shame on those who decide such things.

Ian D. Hall