Valentine's - Weekend
Thursday, February 9, 2017 at 10:32PM Team Experience is celebrating Valentines Day with favorite love scenes. Here's Jose...
Early on in my life I decided that all my favorite romances had to end with the lovers apart. And I mean, seriously, can you name a perfect romance that ends with happily ever after? From Casablanca to Dr. Zhivago and Roman Holiday, it's as if the movies have always told us that a brief, but powerful romance, the kind which makes us swoon in our 80s like Gloria Stuart in Titanic, is the kind of romance we all should crave. But it wasn't until I watched Andrew Haigh's Nottingham-set Weekend in 2011 that I realized as a gay man there was finally one of these romances for someone like me (I won't go into details of how this movie seems to me my biopic...) in which no one ended dead, as most gay romances do in fiction.
In the last scene we see Russell (Tom Cullen) and Glen (Chris New) together, they share a brief kiss as they say goodbye before Glen heads to America. Even though there is nothing really "tragic" about their farewell, it's this idea of the person existing in the same planet, as you have to find the will to move on, that's most devastating. I can see the lovers running into each other years in the future (I doubt they remained Facebook friends, I wouldn't have, would you?) and either of them going into full "of all the gin joints..." Bogie mode as they wonder "what if".
What are some of your favorite non-tragic gay romances? What romantic movie do you feel could be your biopic?
Andrew Haigh, Chris New, Tom Cullen, Valentine's
Reader Comments (26)
Carol.
Honestly never even thought about their relationship or lack thereof post-movie, because I can't wrap my head around the fact that it was just a weekend. It was so powerful.
Ugh, this movie. I can't even believe it's six years old this year.
I cried every time I think about this film. Just heartbreakingly beautiful, relatable and authentic.
Can't believe I'm about to say this, but it is probably the closest film to be my "biopic".
and also CAROL...
Weekend is just gorgeous. I actually saw it for the first time two years ago on Valentine's Day in 35mm. :)
I identified a lot with Blue is the Warmest Colour. I think Adèle and I have the same MBTI. Her relationship with Emma mirrored my first serious relationship. I was a first year art school; he was in his final semester, about five years older than me. We both had a very insatiable appetite and sexual chemistry I've never really had with anyone else. And the food! We ended up living together. One of our biggest differences, besides his extroversion and my introversion, was he was almost always working: developing film, scanning negatives. I was happy just laying around, not doing much, and it frustrated him that I wasn't always as ambitious about my own art making.
There wasn't any cheating or anything like that, but the relationship did end abruptly and it was a few years before we spoke and saw each other again. We're friends now. And I'm happy when I see an old photo of me he took of me or asks to take my portrait.
I think of the film often.
Oh! And Carol. My friends and I are still talking about it.
Favorite non-tragic: My Beautiful Laundrette immediately came to mind. And Maurice.
My biopic: Torch Song Trilogy. No, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. No, I Love You Phillip Morris...
No, Blacula.
That wonderful lesbian movie of the 90's Fucking Amal. Beautiful, non-tragic, cathartic. Love it.
I don't know if the second question referred only to gay movies, but I'm having a LaLa Land kind of story at the moment is kinda heart-breaking, Seeing the movie was cathartic to a degree I didn't expected and maybe that's why I love it more than other people. So that would be my biopic, with a few other twists of course.
Weekend is devastatingly gorgeous. If any of my friends haven't seen it, I immediately book a day to watch it with them as soon as possible.
CAROL.
Romance is my favourite genre, so a handful of favourites of that genre: BRIEF ENCOUNTER, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, THE APARTMENT, ROMAN HOLIDAY, CASABLANCA, CINEMA PARADISO, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, THE ROAD HOME.
And my life is a mixture of CAFE SOCIETY (I'm Jesse's character), and BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR (I'm Adele's). I'm also part-Rosamund in GONE GIRL, but that's another discussion...
When Harry Met Sally is perfect to me and has a very happy ending.
I don't know. Beautiful Thing? A list of non-tragic gay romances would have been helpful. They are so rare.
Weekend is mine too.
La La Land owes a lot of it's love to its unhappy ending.
My favourite non-tragic gay romances... Blue is the Warmest Colour would be one: it's very romantic and it's not a tragedy. Adèle ends up in an OK place emotionally. If the film had ended maybe 10 mins earlier, I wouldn't say that.
Not sure I can think of an answer to the biopic question, but it's a great question!
There's this Taiwanese movie made in the 70s called Space Inside or Space Within (translated from Mandarin - there wasn't an English title back then since it's a niche movie). It featured two guys - one a laborer, the other an office worker - who seemed to grow fond of each other despite their hetero status (or so they thought). One rainy night sealed their fate as lovers and after that, they were torn between their feelings for each other and the pressure to conform to societal expectation, that is, get married and have kids. To cut a long story short, both eventually got married and met by chance years later. The ending was simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking (no spoilers) Can you imagine a gay movie made in Taiwan in 73 or 74 when the country was still under Martial Law? What a brave director. I think he was locked up in jail after that.
Weekend a film as relevant to gay men as any that came before.
Cried heaps of buckets seeing Weekend the first time. I haven't watched it all the way through a second time because I don't want to cry heaps of buckets.
Maurice is the gay movie that still resonates with me. Isolated, insecure gay adolescence. Finding someone you think you connect with for it to not work out. Then finding someone you do connect with in the most unlikely of places. All told in a very frank, matter-of-fact manner.
Brief Encounter is the non-gay movie that sticks with me most. Romance blossoming among mundane every day life. I love that.
After reading this post, the Spanish film The Sex of Angels came up in my mind. I think its a beautiful narrative of what sex is and could be in the future.
Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together. I mean, heartbreakingly awesome!
My favorite non-tragic gay romances: Weekend, Carol, Blue Is The Warmest Color, Moonlight, Happy Together, Keep The Lights On
Don't know what romantic film could be my biopic. I'll have to think about that one.
I recommend you all watch an Australian show called Please Like Me. It's a sitcom, about a gay guy and his best friends, but it's so heartfelt, and the relationships he has as he's exploring his sexuality are poignant and true. It kind of pokes fun at the hipster/millennial generation, and is pretty close to capturing what my life was like in my 20's navigating life as a gay single guy, when all my best friends were straight.
Okay, Carol , sure. But also Kissing Jessica Stein, even though they don't end up together, they stay friends and each thrives. I love that movie.
Other non-tragic romances that are perfect, albeit straight: It Happened One Night, Moonstruck.
There is no question but that Chasing Amy is my biopic. When I met my first husband, I was a lesbian comic book nerd living in New Jersey. Who then started dating a man. It's hard to get more biopic than that.
And then there's a touch of Jessica Stein. Because fast-forward a couple of decades and I was pretty much exclusively dating men when I met Professor Spouse and she knocked my socks off. And replaced them with much gayer socks.
UGH THIS MOVIE.
I love it so much. That ending is just perfect. The whole thing is, really.
JB - Please Like Me is so great! It's actually been discussed on this blog before but not since maybe the 2nd season?
Impossible love appeals so much to me. Weekend and In the Mood for Love are the apotheosis of that genre.
Just saw this movie earlier this year, and it confirmed that Andrew Haigh is one of my favorite up-and-coming filmmakers. There's such emotional truth in his work that doesn't require heightened external drama; it's all the more powerful for being so understated.
I assume by non-tragic romances you're not including romantic comedies? I'll agree there aren't many perfect ones (and indeed too many crappy ones, especially recently), but "When Harry Met Sally," as someone mentioned above, is maybe the best example of a gradual, grow-in-love movie romance - as opposed to the sudden-lightning bolt kind (a flash, and then gone).
Also non-tragic but splendid: "A Room With a View." "Sense & Sensibility." "Before Sunset." And, yes, "Carol."
As for what movie romance really speaks for or to me, I, too, found the ending of "La La Land" especially affecting. This idea that you can be happily with someone else, but run across an ex - or a reminder of an ex - you had deep feelings for and imagine what life would have been like with them - this resonated with me.
Non tragic romance...slow build with a great payoff: Pit Stop.