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| Tookey's Review |
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| Pro Reviews |
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| Mixed Reviews |
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| Cast |
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| Released: |
1967 |
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| Genre: |
DRAMA
OVERRATED
FOREIGN
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| Origin: |
France |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
103 |
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Two lovers (Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne) set off in their car to murder the man's father for his money, only to fall foul of traffic accidents and a bizarre collection of strangers, including a gang of cannibalistic terrorists.
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Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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In keeping with the film's hostility to bourgeois materialism, Godard conscientiously flouts the conventions of popular film-making: his hero and heroine behave repellently from the start, and the director's lack of sympathy for his characters is the opposite of Capra-esque. Even some dustmen from the third world, who announce their hatred of bourgeois society in terms of which Godard would presumably have approved, are presented in as deliberately boring a fashion as possible.
The film works principally as a demonstration of directorial perversity: at times it's as amateurish as a home movie, at other times it's a tour de force. Godard's 10-minute tracking shot of a French traffic jam remains a tiny masterpiece.
Weekend is far from the devastating satire on materialism which some film historians claim it to be. It's an experiment in style which ends up going nowhere. It was in this film that Godard broke free from the constraints of conventional film-making, only to find himself in a void where he never rediscovered his talents. It's a fascinating, over-acclaimed failure.
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