#weekend 2011

Pride Month:

Weekend (2011 film) - digital painting ~

(also an unofficial homage to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's painting 'In Bed')

(09/2023)

Part of my 2024 Pride month art project where I celebrate some of my fav queer films!

(Warning: These films will rip your heart out and then put it back together again.)

God’s Own Country (2017)

This film takes place in the Yorkshire countryside and is basically Brokeback Mountain with a happy ending. It is nitty-gritty and rough around the edges and kind of hard to watch at parts, but there’s so much tenderness woven throughout. Francis Lee did an outstanding job, especially considering this was his first film. Plus, it has a cutie baby Josh O’Connor in it 🥰

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

This film is about a painter who is hired to do the wedding portrait of a young woman who is engaged to be married to a nobleman. She refuses to sit for the portrait, so it must be done without her knowledge. Marianne poses as her companion so she can study her features for the portrait, but an intense emotional connection forms. It’s a very artsy very French film, but it’s so beautiful and emotional and the intimacy and care between Marianne and Heloise melts my heart 🥺 I also love the friendship they have with the young maid, Sophie.

Weekend (2011)

This film takes place over the course of a weekend as two men have a Friday night hookup but then start talking the following morning and realize that maybe there’s something there. They’re at different places in their coming-out journey, but they spend the entire weekend together in a little bubble, talking and getting to know one another. And then as the weekend comes to a close, they realize that they’re starting to genuinely fall in love. It’s a quiet, introspective film and it brings up some really important conversations around sexuality as well.

Boys/Jongens (2014)

I have two comfort movies that I watch no more than once a year, for fear of consuming them in my mind, and they are Weekend by Andrew Haigh and God's Own Country by Francis Lee. They mean a lot to me, because they're universal in representing the burning desire for human closeness. They're not just universal: for me, these are the two movies that better than any other have managed to synthesize such a vast and profound concept. I search all the time for movies and stories capable of touching every chord of tenderness within me. Abandonment and human closeness are concepts that seem to exclude each other, but are complementary: I do nothing but vivisect them, when I write.

In my humble attempt to pay homage to such concepts (and therefore these two movies), I self-published a little story for italian readers two days ago, on the first day of spring. It has nothing to do with these movies and it has a lot to do with them. Inspiration is such a blessed thing.

I specifically owe a lot to Andrew Haigh, as a director and writer, because he entrusts writing with the task of making his characters re/live. It's not as obvious as I make it seem. You should watch Weekend and All Of Us Strangers to understand what I'm talking about: you feel the care for his characters, as if they were real. Again, it's not as trivial as it sounds. Maybe what I mean is that I feel cared for, when I watch them.

The story I wrote it's about someone who probably, in my knowledge, never got to experience care as in human closeness. I won't elaborate, but it's something that has always broken my fucking heart.

Andrew Haigh also has what I consider the greatest talent of all: he brings to life male characters that feel like they were written by women. Oh my God, it's such an absolute pleasure to experience male protagonists who are built to be so open in considering others, in listening, in choosing the right word to say.

Yes, both these movies focus on male homosexual relationships, the point is also the fact that they have the ability to heal certain concepts about men, for me as a woman.

“-And all of this from talking about sex?

-All of that from talking about sex.”