D é N O U E M E N T S

January 28, 2012 • 1:04 am

Weekend and the Days Spent After

You cannot really fault Russel for being suffocated at a married friend’s party. These people he grew up with, especially Jamie who has been his bestfriend since 12 when they were both moving from an orphanage to the next, are talking about children parties and strippers. The latter would be appealing, only if Russel were straight. Or the former, if he had kids. He skips the night-cap and sneak into a gay bar hoping for a good Friday night lay. He meets Glen, a confident and at times too brusque to be true art gallery worker who tapes his one night stand partners for a narrative art project that would, in his views, challenge media brainwashing of isolating homosexuals and would too provide personal realizations (to the speaker, and would be listeners) on the characters we make up to get laid which ultimately show what stops us from being that person ourselves. All that by stating the carnality of a night which according to Russel is a collection of ‘dirty talk.”

In Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, we meet two people both at the crossroads of something we can safely bet as existential crisis. Russel (Tom Cullen), shy, charming and “fine” does his routine well. His kitchen is with thrift shop antique cups and well-varnished cupboards, neat cut-outs of portraits adorn his abode with order that would seem odd for a twenty-something single who is supposed to spend not much time at home. “I am fine when I am home, “ he states. He works as a lifeguard and is not out to his colleagues. It seems that he fills up his days jumping over a fence beyond his height to see what it is like to be in the open. In an instance, he looks at the two men guests, while in his job, with wonder and notice. Glen (Chris New), on the other hand, is idealistic and reluctant of intimacy, “I don’t do boyfriends”, he quips. His hesitation for a relationship, later revealed in the film, is due to a fallen, betrayed relationship and his impending two days away departure to Portland for an art course. He walks clenched fist with regards to his homosexuality and can spit fire to straight people on how the whole industry is buoyed up in support of their kind. Living with a straight female roommate, Glen is carefree and daring, and unlike Russell who is satisfied living in Nottingham, Glen sees it as a place to stay in a rut.

“I Don’t Want Love” by The Antlers

This tugging and pulling between Russell and Glen is what feeding to their gentle, luminescent attraction. The talks in the film develop like the casual yet too revealing conversations we engage in, ready to risk our hearts with the possibility (and in this case, knowingly) of it being run over by a truck in the end. Russell and Glen overlap each other’s words, circle around their insecurities and lick each other’s wounds— Russell admitting his admiration over Glen’s bravery of coming out and Glen’s acting out as Russel’s dad. Audience get to see how intimacy works, in this point not confined to gay or straight kaleidoscope but from the ambiguity of being scared, hurt, and lonely.

No matter how closely we watch Russell and Glen, there are some moments in the film when our spying is not enough. Some dialogues are hissed out in murmurs, some facial clues shied away by the moving, unsteady shots. We get to see Haigh’s subtle, poignant way of making us realize that no formula or how-to help books will shed light on how this sort of stuff works. And we could never be successful enough to champion relationships no matter how much we invest in it, or chose not to reveal.

The rewards we get on Weekend are these, that Glen finally learns to look up after his second visit in Russell’s place and is followed by a third, that Russell conjures enough courage at the brink of losing Glen, and that proverbial truth that no matter how we hold back, the train will make its stop and we get to be the one to decide whether we take a go at it or not.