Le Week-End (Roger Michell, 2013)

The Notting Hill director takes on a Hanif Kureishi screenplay, so the expected synthesis might be middle-class feelgood fare with a maladroit political subtext struggling to get through the gloop. This is partially indeed the case, with the story of a middle-aged couple on a weekender trip to Paris, trying to rekindle their relationship. It's initially not much more than a cosy travelogue, with Kureishi's contribution seeming to be to make the wife erratically vitriolic in the middle of the bonhomie. The film's saving graces are the enduring appeal of Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as the couple, and rather surprisingly the appearance of Jeff Goldblum in a prolonged cameo in one of his turns as a boggle-eyed motormouth, which is always uncomfortably close to what you suspect the actor actually is. Here, however, it works to bring our sympathies back on the side of the somewhat feckless pair as there's no doubt that whatever delusions they have, they're small potatoes compared to those of their pontificating friend.

6/10