Le Week-End, the fourth collaboration between director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Enduring Love, Morning Glory) and writer Hanif Kureishi (The Mother, Venus), continues to explore the ups and downs of love in later life, and is perhaps their best to date.

Revisiting Paris for the first time since their honeymoon, acerbic and long-married British couple Nick and Meg (Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan) yearn to recapture their youthful fearlessness and idealism. When it emerges that Nick is being nudged into early retirement and Meg is fed up with her work and wants a fresh start (that may or may not include her husband), the prickly resentments, crushing disappointments and meagre consolations familiar to anyone who has been in a long relationship come to the fore, especially when they run into an insufferably successful old friend (Jeff Goldblum).

Perhaps building on the legacy of Richard Linklater's Before Midnight, this film is an unflinching portrayal of something we rarely see in fiction - a raw and precarious relationship played out in every day scenarios.

In this post-screening Q&A, film critic and journalist Anwar Brett meets with director Roger Michell and producer Kevin Loader to talk about making this bittersweet, sharp comedy. How accurate a portrayal of marriage is this film? And how do Michell and Loader avoid their own 'mini-bar moments'?

Hear about Michell and Kureishi's weekend research trip to Paris, and how the whole team - including the actors - helped the naturalistic script evolve. The pair also discuss the nature of the shoot, completing filming in a month, and using natural light so the emphasis remained on the performances.

Le Week-End is currently screening at Watershed - book tickets here.

Posted on Tue 15 Oct 2013.

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