Film by Jean-Luc Godard
Weekend
|
---|
Theatrical release poster
|
|
French
| Week-end
|
---|
|
Directed by
| Jean-Luc Godard
|
---|
Screenplay by
| Jean-Luc Godard
|
---|
Based on
| "La autopista del Sur"
by
Julio Cortazar
(uncredited)
|
---|
Produced by
| Raymond Danon
|
---|
Starring
| |
---|
Cinematography
| Raoul Coutard
|
---|
Edited by
| Agnes Guillemot
|
---|
Music by
| Antoine Duhamel
|
---|
Production
companies
|
- Les Films Copernic
- COMACICO
- Lira Films
- Cinecidi
|
---|
Distributed by
|
- Athos Films (France)
- Magna (Italy)
|
---|
Release dates
|
- 29 December 1967
(
1967-12-29
)
(France)
- 1 May 1968
(
1968-05-01
)
(Italy)
|
---|
Running time
| 105 minutes
|
---|
Countries
| |
---|
Language
| French
|
---|
Budget
| $250,000 (estimated)
|
---|
Weekend
(
French
:
Week-end
) is a 1967
postmodern
black comedy film
[2]
[3]
written and directed by
Jean-Luc Godard
, based on
Julio Cortazar
's short story "La autopista del Sur".
[4]
It stars mainstream French TV stars
Mireille Darc
and
Jean Yanne
.
Jean-Pierre Leaud
, comic star of numerous
French New Wave
films, including
Francois Truffaut
's
The 400 Blows
(1959) and Godard's earlier
Masculin Feminin
(1966), appeared in two roles.
Raoul Coutard
served as
cinematographer
.
Plot
[
edit
]
Roland and Corinne Durand are a
bourgeois
couple. Each has a secret lover and conspires to murder the other. They drive to Corinne's parents' home in the country to secure her inheritance from her dying father, resolving to resort to murder if necessary. The trip becomes a chaotic journey through a French countryside populated by bizarre characters and punctuated by violent car accidents. After their own
Facel-Vega
is destroyed in a collision, they wander through a series of vignettes involving
class struggle
and figures from literature and history, such as
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
and
Emily Bronte
.
In a
metafictional
touch, some scenes show the characters in the film being
self-aware
such as a driver asking Roland after being flagged down, "Are you in a film or reality?", the film's real actors from the Italian co-production being mentioned during Corinne and Roland's search for a car to Oinville (to which they never specify further as to which Oinville they are referring to), and various
intertitles
which are a defining feature to Godard's films.
When Corinne and Roland eventually arrive at her parents' place, they discover that her father has died and her mother refuses to give them a share of the spoils. They kill her and hit the road again, only to fall into the hands of a group of
hippie
revolutionaries (calling themselves the
Seine and Oise
Liberation Front) that support themselves through theft and
cannibalism
. Killed during an escape attempt, Roland is chopped up and cooked.
Cast
[
edit
]
Themes and style
[
edit
]
Weekend
has been compared to
Alice in Wonderland
, the
James Bond
series, and the works of
Marquis de Sade
.
[5]
[6]
Tim Brayton described it as a "film that reads itself, tells the viewer what that reading should be, and at the same time tells the viewer that this reading is inaccurate and should be ignored."
[7]
In one of the early scenes, Corinne tells her lover about a sexual experience she had. Part of the story she tells is based on the
Georges Bataille
novel
Story of the Eye
(
Histoire de l'œil
).
[5]
Inspiration
[
edit
]
According to a letter from Argentine writer
Julio Cortazar
to his translator
Suzanne Jill Levine
, the indirect inspiration for the film was Cortazar's short story "La autopista del Sur" ("The Southern Thruway"). Cortazar explained that while a British producer was considering filming his story, a third party had presented the idea to Godard, who was unaware of its true source.
[
citation needed
]
Reception
[
edit
]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93%, based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads "Jean-Luc Godard fixes his considerable ire against French society and the broader human condition in the morbidly funny
Weekend
, an abstract road trip to damnation that finds the enfant terrible in peak form."
[8]
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
|
---|
|
Feature
| |
---|
Short and
segment
| |
---|
Related
| |
---|