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Weekend (1967 film)
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Wikipedia article
'Weekend' is a 1967 French postmodern black comedy film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard and starring Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne, both of whom were mainstream French TV stars. Jean-Pierre Laud, comic star of numerous French New Wave films including Truffaut's 'Les Quatre Cent Coups (The Four Hundred Blows)' and Godard's earlier 'Masculin Fminin', appeared in two roles. Raoul Coutard served as cinematographer; 'Weekend' was his last collaboration with Godard for over a decade.
Plot summary
Roland and Corinne Durand are a bourgeois couple. Each has a secret lover and conspires to murder the other. They drive out 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 chaotically picaresque 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 Bront.
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
* Mireille Darc as Corinne
* Jean Yanne as Roland
* Paul Ggauff as pianist
* Jean-Pierre Laud as Saint-Just and man in phone booth
* Blandine Jeanson as Emily Bront and page-turner for pianist
* Yves Afonso as Tom Thumb
* Jean-Pierre Kalfon as the leader of Front de Libration de la Seine et Oise
* Juliet Berto as a member of FLSO and a bourgeoise in a Triumph
* Jean Eustache as a hitchhiker
* Lszl Szab as an Arab garbage collector and revolutionary
* Omar Diop as an African garbage collector and revolutionary
* Anne Wiazemsky as an audience member in the piano recital
* Michel Cournot as an audience member in the piano recital
Themes and style
'Weekend' has been compared to 'Alice in Wonderland', the 'James Bond' series, and the works of Marquis de Sade. 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."
In one of the first scenes Corinne tells her lover about a sexual experience she had. Part of the story she tells is based on George Bataille novel 'Story of the eye' ('Histoire de l'il').
Inspiration
According to a letter from famous Argentine writer Julio Cortzar to his translator Suzanne Jill Levine, the indirect inspiration for the movie was Cortzar's short story 'La autopista del Sur' ("The Southern Thruway"). Cortzar explained that while a British producer was considering filming his story, a third party had already presented the idea to Godard, who was unaware of its true source.
References
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