Weekend

Weekend is a 1967 postmodern black comedy film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on Julio Cortázar's short story "La autopista del Sur". It stars Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne, both of whom were mainstream French TV stars. Jean-Pierre Léaud, comic star of numerous French New Wave films including François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) and Godard's earlier Masculin Féminin (1966), appeared in two roles. Raoul Coutard served as cinematographer; Weekend was his last collaboration with Godard for over a decade. Plot Roland and Corinne Durand are a bourgeois couple. Each has a secret lover and conspires to murder the other. They drive out to Corinne's parents' home in the country to secure her inheritance from her dying father, resolving to resort to murder if necessary. The trip becomes a chaotically picaresque journey through a French countryside populated by bizarre characters and punctuated by violent car accidents. After their own Facel-Vega is destroyed in a collision, they wander through a series of vignettes involving class struggle and figures from literature and history, such as Louis Antoine de Saint-Just and Emily Brontë. When Corinne and Roland eventually arrive at her parents' place, they discover that her father has died and her mother refuses to give them a share of the spoils. They kill her and hit the road again, only to fall into the hands of a group of hippie revolutionaries (calling themselves the Seine and Oise Liberation Front) that support themselves through theft and cannibalism. Killed during an escape attempt, Roland is chopped up and cooked. Cast Mireille Darc as Corinne Jean Yanne as Roland Paul Gégauff as pianist Jean-Pierre Léaud as Saint-Just and man in phone booth Blandine Jeanson as Emily Brontë and page-turner for pianist Yves Afonso as Tom Thumb Jean-Pierre Kalfon as the leader of Front de Libération de la Seine et Oise Juliet Berto as a member of FLSO and a bourgeoise in a Triumph Jean Eustache as a hitchhiker László Szabó as an Arab garbage collector and revolutionary Omar Diop as an African garbage collector and revolutionary Anne Wiazemsky as an audience member in the piano recital Michel Cournot as an audience member in the piano recital