I’M NOT SURE we ever stop thinking in terms of what our lives will be like when we “grow up.” Even our final, vulnerable stages of life are riddled with questions. True, if you go to Paris for the weekend to celebrate 30 years of marriage, your fate certainly could have been worse—but even the most outwardly ideal situation disguises struggle.
In Le Week-End, Meg (Lindsay Duncan) and Nick’s (Jim Broadbent) struggles are touch and go. They share jokes about life’s petty details and grand philosophies (“People can change… they can get worse“) and respond to each other with hearty peals of laughter. Most of all, they laugh at themselves—the result of a deep connection made deeper over the years. Meg is youthful, full of persnickety demands and mischievous excitement, traipsing through the city in black stockings and lace, while Nick trails behind—mumbling, doting, and pushing up his glasses, grateful for Meg’s affection when he can get it.
Meg and Nick are completely normal. Nothing in their situation is remarkable—not in their careers, their children, or their relationship. Their problems are average, and amusing as the couple may be, it’s around the time you start to wonder why you should care that Jeff Goldblum shows up.
Like a human bucket of ice water, the sudden appearance of Goldblum—playing an old friend and former equal who met with a comparably glamorous fate—reveals all that Le Week-End has been hiding. If you can appreciate a good shit show that descends from the best intentions and the best-laid dinner plans—and really, can you say that you’ve lived if you’ve never survived a really humiliating one?—you’ll appreciate the realism of the confusion captured in Le Week-End.
Something like this might happen to you, too, you know. Maybe when you grow up.