I don’t watch a lot of gay cinema. To be honest, I find the quality of the films is usually pretty excruciating, and the plot/story is so often subsumed by the Director’s autobiographic compulsion to share sweaty nudity and/or anguished introspection. I always feel like I am being played – and clumsily, at that. However, in spite of containing certain levels of both naked flesh and angstig argument, Weekend is actually a pretty fantastic film.
It tells the tale of a couple of young people who meet just days before one of them is due to fly away on a two year study engagement, and as they get to know each other, they find themselves changing as they fall inconveniently in love. It could be anyone really, and the gay thing – though front and centre – is also kind of superfluous. Weekend is set and filmed in Nottingham in the UK, which you may or may not know, is not the thriving cultural centre of anything. One other thing: Tom Cullen. Really. You’ll thank me for it.