Le Week-End
A quick vacation exposes a marriage’s weaknesses.
Director Roger Michell
(R)
**
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Le Week-End is “the kind of gentle melancholy comedy after which you leave the theater not sure quite how depressed you are supposed to feel,” said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian (U.K.). Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent play a British couple in their 60s who’ve decided to celebrate their 30th anniversary with a quick visit to Paris, only to learn a hard truth—that they are “intensely dissatisfied with themselves and each other.” Broadbent’s burdened with having to play a worrier and a bore, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. But Duncan gets to be “witty, fiercely intelligent, and intensely sexy,” and she’s worth watching throughout. Unfortunately, the screenplay gives both characters speeches that play like “clumsy lectures,” and “all sorts of talent has been chucked away by the director’s heavy touch.” Worse, the screenplay turns saccharine in the final stretch, said Ben Kenigsberg inthe A.V. Club. The performances “go a long way toward making the movie seem pricklier than it turns out to be,” but they can’t overcome an ending that marks Le Week-End as a “thoroughly ordinary melodrama.”
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
See the bright lights from these 7 big-city hotels
The Week Recommends Immerse yourself in culture, history and nightlife
-
Scientists want to regrow human limbs. Salamanders could lead the way.
Under the radar Humans may already have the genetic mechanism necessary
-
Seven wild discoveries about animals in 2025
In depth Mice have Good Samaritan tendencies and gulls work in gangs