I thought that 'Weekend' would never end

We Netflixed the movie Weekend and did not care for it. It was disappointing because I had read rave reviews and it got very high marks on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. It is part of the Criterion Collection of DVDs, which gave me high hopes because that company usually chooses to preserve time-tested movies with high reputations.

Weekend is a British indie-type movie about these guys who meet at a club, have a one-night stand and over the course of a weekend, start having feelings for one another just before one of the guys has to move to America for two years. It was affecting on the level that the two were taking tentative steps toward a relationship when one drops the bomb that he’s leaving the country Sunday afternoon. Then it was poignant to see the two express their feelings, with the shy guy finally able to be gay in public.

It was mostly just an annoying movie. They were not only mumbling but mumbling with British accents, which makes it worse. Most of the movie was two guys having a conversation late into the night, with the monotony thankfully broken up by as hardcore sex scenes as an unrated non-porn movie could get away with. For me, the effect of all this talking was like being sober at a party where very drunk and/or high people are having a lengthy chat about their childhoods and relationships and the one never knew his parents and the other’s boyfriend cheated on him and ZZZZZZZ. You see these people at parties and from your vantage point of sobriety, you think, “My God, these people couldn’t be any more annoying.” It was long stretches of this.

I couldn’t really identify with these characters at all. First off, they spent a Saturday night inhaling mounds of cocaine, which I certainly never did, even in my young and single days. I just hope people don’t see this carousing and stuff in Weekend as “the real gay experience.” Sometimes I wonder if people don’t care for the gays because they think we lead these debauched lifestyles. Not all of us. Steve and I watched these coke-snorting people while sitting on the couch sober on a Friday night, trying not to fall asleep at 11 p.m. and with cats napping on and around us as the Christmas tree lights blinked. How debauched.

I keep striking out with Netflix movies and maybe I should just leave the picks to Steve. I just keep not liking a lot of these critically acclaimed movies. We watched The French Connection, which has a very good reputation and I just didn’t care for it. I just got nothing from it beyond the fact that it had a beginning, middle and end. A few years ago, we saw Repulsion, which people love, and I thought it was godawful. Catherine Deneuve’s character was such a sad sack that I couldn’t have cared less whether she went mad or what happened to her.

Maybe I should just leave the Netflix decisions to Steve. I’m tired of apologizing for the preceding movie once the credits roll.