By Warren Day
In “Weekend,” we finally have a well-received 2011 movie where the love story at the center is between two people of the same sex. Not where it’s a sidebar, as it was with the excellent “Beginners” that opened in July. And this British independent film is receiving even better reviews, particularly from straight critics. Now why would straight reviewers react more positive to it than gay ones? And why should that bother me or you?
What is undisputed is that Great Britain has given us some of the best gay-themed movies ever made – “Maurice,” “My Beautiful Launderette,” “Prick Up Your Ears,” “Wilde,” “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “The Crying Game,” “Beautiful Thing,” “Another Country,” “Velvet Goldmine,” and many others. Also fifty years ago it was a British film, “Victim,” with Dirk Bogarde, that was the first major release to ever say the word “homosexual” and to deal with homosexual persecution. So “Weekend” is a part of a distinguished lineage, even if its working-class British accents can be a little hard to understand.
It tells the contemporary story of Russell, a lifeguard for a community pool in Nottingham, England, a place most Americans probably haven’t heard mentioned since a certain sheriff was chasing a certain guy in green tights through Sherwood Forest. One Friday night, he attends a potluck dinner thrown by some straight friends whose happy relationships and contented lives make him even more aware of the loneliness in his own.
Somewhat in desperation, he stops off in a non-descript gay bar on the way
home and is ignored by Chris, the one guy who seems to interest him, but then when Chris can’t score with the guy he wants, he decides he’ll settle for Russell and a one-night stand. Since this isn’t an opportune beginning and since there’s no expectations beyond a fleeting hook-up, they’re less on-guard with each other, less concerned with projecting a calculated image. Over the first 24 hours, they become more honest and open than usual – the result of which is they catch themselves developing some mutual feelings, feelings that are intensified when it’s discovered, for a reason I won’t reveal here, that the relationship cannot continue beyond the weekend. Is a 48-hour weekend time enough to know someone well enough that you’re willing to walk away from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the hope you’ve found your once-in-a-lifetime love?
This film has been rightly praised for the naturalistic way in which their small disclosures and small discoveries about each other leads to something that seems both real and rare, and how the movie’s ending seems genuinely unforced and realistic. To critics who’ve long ago OD’d on the cutesy and predictable formulas of Hollywood romantic comedies (think Jennifer Aniston), this naturalism in both story and acting can be very enticing.
So while this difference from usual rom-com movies may give an understandable cause for straight critics to praise “Weekend,” the fact that it deals with a situation many gays have known either personally or from the experiences of their friends, may give it a tired and ever-so-familiar ring. While on the other hand, seeing two gay men in this situation may provide a fresh spin to straights that it won’t have for us, because you can hear this story being told almost any night in almost any gay bar.
Harvey Fierstein, who wrote and starred in both the play and movie-version of “Torch Song Trilogy,” said that when straights told him they felt his story wasn’t really a gay story, but a universal one, he would protest, saying he’d spent decades transferring heterosexual romances into terms he could understand, and he wasn’t willing to have his gay story homogenized into something generic. There are too few gay stories, Fierstein said, to have them tailored into one-size-fits-all. And as he further stated, he’d be offended if someone claimed that “Schindler’s List” could just as well be about some WASPs in Grover Corners, New Hampshire.
Good stories do have some universal truths, but not at the expense of its particular characters and their often unique struggles.
What I’d like to do is what critics should do more often and say you should probably ignore any reservations I’ve expressed here; chances are you’ll be glad you saw “Weekend,” and will find it to be that rare movie that expresses gay life in a non-exaggerated and non-cartoonish way. The fact that this film may remind you of similar incidents in your own life will make it personal and that will make it powerful.