Weekend

38-year-old British writer-director Andrew Haigh is part of the new wave – and the success of his sophomore feature, Weekend, is suggestive of a cinematic vista relatively unexplored as yet. Simply and elegantly executed, it’s the story of two young men in Nottingham who cross paths in a one-night stand, and end up having a weekend of sex, conversation and substance-abuse that profoundly affects them both. In its lo-fi sensibilities, its ‘talkiness’ and its exposition of pre-mid-life-crisis, it’s been compared to Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise. Haigh is as much interested in the awkward and bittersweet dynamics of budding relationships as presenting a specifically ‘gay perspective’.

“Part of me making this film was being frustrated that there wasn’t anything similar,” says Haigh. “There’s a lot of filmmakers who are interested in [telling these stories], but they don’t make the films. It think it’s probably down to the fact that it’s hard to get films like this funded…Or it’s just about a fear of doing something different, especially in relation to gay-themed material.”

Weekend isn’t just a different treatment of gay experience, it’s adopting a different approach to finding its audience; rather than targeting queer film festivals, Haigh set his sights on Texan festival South By Southwest. “Because a lot of the films I’ve liked have come out of South By Southwest, it felt like a good place to show it – and also I wanted the film to be viewed, I suppose, within that indie sensibility.”

Whatever Haigh’s doing, it’s working: following its SXSW Official Competition screening, the film was awarded the Emerging Visions accolade, picked up for US distribution, and has since scored rave reviews and editorials in the New York Times, Film Comment, Time – and did quite respectable box office business for a film of its size, expanding from one cinema to 26 across its 10-week run, and raking in just under half a million – and all this before it even opens in the UK.

“Our world premiere was the opening night of SXSW – but not the big opening film, which was Duncan Moon’s Source Code. So everyone went to that, and we had about 40 people in the audience for our screening,” Haigh laughs. “But luckily in that audience was someone from [US distribution company] Sundance Selects and some other distributors – and then by day two of the festival, people were bidding for the festival. It was crazy, so weird – we went to bed thinking, ‘Oh my god everyone hates the film’ and woke up and everyone wanted to buy it!”

Part of Weekend’s success is the balance it strikes between universal themes and a frank rejection of heterosexual gender norms. Besides the sex and intimacy, Haigh gives his characters fiery blasts of dialogue railing against the hetero-normative media and society they feel alienated by. “While I wanted a bigger audience than just a traditional ‘gay dvd’ audience, I also only want to get that audience if I can still be honest with the kind of film I want to make," says Haigh. "So very early on I decided not to water anything down or make it more palatable…I just thought people would respond to it if it tried to be truthful.”

A former editor with a slate of work that includes blockbusters like Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, Haigh resisted the temptation to manipulate the narrative of Weekend, choosing instead to shoot scenes in single long takes, filmed chronologically. The result feels like being a fly on the wall as the relationship gradually unfolds. “It’s really scary," he admits, "because obviously you rely so much on everybody – [especially] the actors to make long scenes work…” With this in mind, he cast established theatre actors Tom Cullen and Chris New in the lead roles. “They understand the need to stay in character for the whole time.”

Named as one of Screen International’s ‘Stars of Tomorrow’ in 2008, and recently touted by industry bible Variety as one of ten screenwriters to watch, Haigh says, “When you leave university you need to earn a living, and so I just started working [as an editor], knowing that I wanted to direct but not having the money or confidence to go, ‘Oh I’ll just make a film now’. And then you get a bit trapped – you end up working and the pay’s alright… But then I got to that stage where I thought, 'I have to draw a line and just focus on my own projects'. I kinda wish I’d done it earlier,” he laughs.

BY DEE JEFFERSON