Themes: Political Unrest, Class Differences, Nightmare Vacations
Main Cast: Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Valerie Lagrange, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jean Eustache, Paul Gégauff
Release Year: 1967
Country: FR/IT
Run Time: 105 minutes
Plot
French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's Le Weekend remains his most consistently relentless attack on the bourgeois values of his own country and the perceived imperialism of the United States. Mireille Darc plays the central character, an "average" woman who is systematically radicalized during a weekend motor trip. No sooner have the woman and her husband (Jean Yanne) embarked on their journey than they become enmeshed in the mother of all traffic jams. The motorists rave, rant, burn, rape, murder, pillage and even descend into cannibalism -- all of which is treated by Godard as a natural progression of events. The prevalent theory that Jean-Luc Godard had intended Weekend as the apotheosis of his career is bolstered by the film's last two titles: "End of Film." "End of Cinema." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Jean-Luc Godard's vision of a bourgeois apocalypse, Weekend savages consumer society and gleefully deconstructs narrative. A typical middle-class couple's casual sojourn into the country lands them in the most nightmarish traffic jam in history. In a single, 10-minute long dolly shot, Godard reveals a seemingly interminable snarl of smashed and burning cars, bored motorists, and dead bodies. The couple then finds themselves mixed up with a band of forest-dwelling Maoists who rape, loot, and cannibalize. As in much of Godard's late 1960s work, a plot summary only hints at the film's rebellious absurdity. Constructed as a series of digressions, the film shatters all cinematic conventions. Characters directly address the camera (at one point, the male protagonist complains to the audience about how ludicrous the film is, at another an African garbage collector with no obvious connection to the film speaks his mind to an off-camera interviewer); music wells up at inappropriate times only to stop suddenly; and the camera spins and moves without any respect for traditional cinema space. Although the film is dated by its valorization of the once-fashionable ideology of Maoism, its cathartic chaos and experimental style still make Weekend a wicked romp for the cinematically adventurous. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Ernest Menzer - Cook; Yves Alfonso - Gros Poncet; Yves Beneyton - Member of the FLSO; Blandine Jeanson - Girl in Farmyard; Daniel Pommereulle - Joseph Balsamo; Georges Staquet - Tractor Driver; Virginie Vignon - Marie-Madeleine; Anne Wiazemsky - Girl in Farmyard/Member of FLSO; Juliet Berto - Girl in Car Crash/Mcmber of FLSO; Laszlo Szabo - Arab speaking for his black brother; Yves Afonso - Tom Thumb; Jean-Claude Guilbert - Tramp
