Weekend—snatched up by Sundance Selects, subject of great acclaim at SXSW—opens with a classic encounter: Two handsome men meet in a gay bar, go home together, wake up together, have coffee in bed and piece the night back together, together. But the gay bar, which happens to be in Nottingham, is shot as gay bars are actually experienced: desperate, dim, inspiring of great ambivalence. The men look as gay men actually look: bearded, not perfectly assembled clothes-wise, with nervous habits such as nail biting and cell-phone checking. And the morning after smells like mornings after actually smell: spilled booze, armpits, the painted-over pleasantness of the guy who snuck off to brush his teeth while getting coffee, the un-freshness of the guy who complains, “Now you smell all minty fresh and I smell of cock and bum.”
The subject of this film is, refreshingly, neither the chase, nor the triumph, nor the survival, nor the tragedy of two gay men living in a straight world. (“Are you happy?” one man asks the other later in the film. “I’m fine,” the other replies. “Yeah, things could be fucking better. And easier. But I am absolutely fine.”) The subject is not even the gayness of the moments between them, though several moments in this film—semen on a hairy stomach, “Faggot” written in magnets on a minifridge, catcalls on a train platform—are uninhibitedly, yet almost shruggingly, gay.
Weekend‘s subject is more interesting and universal: moments themselves, and in particular the moments of a new relationship.
Glen, the one who smells of cock and bum the morning after, is in his 30s, a slight, somewhat surly aspiring artist, and he’s undertaken a project of recording interviews with his one-night stands. When the two, in the beginning stages of what’s turning out to be a full weekend together, meet up in the afternoon of the morning after, Glen, played by Chris New, explains what his recording project is about: “That tape thing isn’t really about sex at all,” he tells the shyer, swarthier, not-completely-out Russell, played by Tom Cullen.
They are seated in Russell’s kitchen, on an upper floor of a project-style tower in some endless not-quite-suburb. After worrying that he’s about to sound like “what artists sound like when they talk about their work,” and pausing to roll a cigarette, Glen describes the aim of the recording he made of Russell earlier that day: “You know what it’s like when you first sleep with someone you don’t know?” They both smile, because obviously they both do. “It’s—you, like, become this blank canvas. And it gives you an opportunity to project onto this blank canvas who you want to be… And what happens is, while you’re projecting who you want to be, this gap opens up between who you want to be and who you really are. And in that gap, it shows you what’s stopping you becoming who you want to be.”
Here, finally, is something different, subtle, and worth exploring in gay film. There was definitely a time, and probably a need, for simple gay stories and unsubtle gay characters, for easy plots about heroes and tragic lives, for memorable shticks and reality-show-style catchphrases, for all those iconic leaders who were idealized, lionized, memorialized. It’s just that now is not so much that time. Weekend gets this, gratefully embraces this, and—using two powerfully plain performances, two charming British accents, and the tension of a looming end to what’s barely begun (Glen is about to leave the country for several years)—spends a few complicated days in the gap between where we want to be and where we really are. 
This story has been updated since its original publication.
I believe this film may actually be set in Nottingham.
Correction: The film is actually set in Nottingham, not London. Nottingham is decidedly less upscale and more working-class than London – making the class tension between Glenn and Russell another creative and decidely ungay subtopic of the film.
I loved this movie. But I felt that the focus on closet issues and gay assimilation made it feel a little… out of date. Like it should have come out in 1996, not 2011. It would have been a great follow-up to Beautiful Thing.
@1 and 2: You’re right, thanks for pointing that out. All fixed now.
Sometimes I think it is a little hard for those of us living in Seattle to remember that the rest of the world isnt living in a place where it is so “ho-hum, gay” level of acceptance.
Since I havent been here all that long, I am still suprised when people treat me and my wife like, you know, normal. so the idea of the closet/assimilation stuff isnt so strange to me.
I hope to go see this this weekend
@5: Sure… but in many of the cosmopolitan places where gays have congregated it is in fact rather ho-hum to be gay, at least in some senses, and these sorts of films are appealing to those of us who have that experience… and in fact, there are lots of us. Not everything must be tailored to the forgotten few who live out in the sticks. 🙂
Ho-Hum – no one really cares whether or not you live in a city where there is little (obvious) homophobia in deciding whether to see this great movie. I suppose you don’t go to movies about civil war ’cause “hey I can’t relate to civil wars not being in one right now”, or movies about slums, ’cause “hey I’m not living in a slum so why would I see a movie about something I’m not experiencing in my own life.” Try expanding your oh-so cosmopolitan horizons a little Ms. boomlet!
@ 6 and 7
Why are you so snitty to Womyn2me?
She said nothing derogatory about the film.
She was making a comment in regards to RDM statement that they thought the “the focus on closet issues and gay assimilation made it feel a little… out of date.”
It was a valid comment and respectful.
Your comments were not.
I have seen this film. Closet and gay assimilation are still valid topics – they relate to the issue of self-identity: who we are and who we want to be. In this movie, both characters are trying to figure out the answers themselves. The journey is mesmerising.
Loved the film.