WEDNESDAY MATINEE: Le Week-end

Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan in “Le Week-end” | Music Box Films

Destination: Paris

Movie: Le Week-end

This review is adapted from Reel Life With Jane, where I first wrote it as a rave for Hollywood–and Hollywood on the Thames for recognizing that life and love does not stop at 30-something. VMB

In the British film, “Le Week-end”, a couple in their sixties (Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan) travel to Paris for the weekend to revisit the scene of their honeymoon 30 years before. We get silent clues about their relationship as they ride the train into the city, each engrossed in his/her own newspaper. Even the choice of newspapers (see the picture above) tells us this couple are not on the same page.

He wants only to get to the hotel and settle down, she–to the delight of the viewer–wants to see all of Paris, and keeps feeding euros to the driver to keep him driving as we get a tour of all the gorgeous streets of Paris.

Boredom has crept into their marriage, turning her shrewish and him desperate.  At times, the sharp dialogue sounds like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, ” except that it is interspersed with moments of true affection and plenty of humor.

When they arrive at their honeymoon hotel in Montmarte–after a lot of uphill climbing, which somehow they had not noticed thirty years ago–they discover that it has gone downhill and she insists they leave.

Maybe younger viewers won’t get it, but the over-60 crowd will understand that just because your knees rebel at climbing the steps to Sacre Couer with the same speed as in your 30s, life is not over.

The question is, how to stay alive while you are still living.

The couple are co-conspirators in life — used to playing supporting roles for each other in such capers as running away from a restaurant bill. Jeff Goldblum as a thoroughly obnoxious American writer serves as a catalyst for some painful truth telling at a dinner party that turns into denouement.

Le Week-end definitely rates as a movie for the traveler’s library. (Not out on DVD yet, the film just starting making the rounds of American theaters in September). As they enjoy the couple’s struggles in “Le Week-end,” viewers are treated to scenes in Montemarte and along the Seine and in expensive Parisian hotels and restaurants. Ahh, Paree, ageless City of (ageless) Love.