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THE WEEKEND AWAY
Director: Kim Farrant Cast: Leighton Meester, Christina Wolfe, Ziad Bakri, Luke Norris, Amar Bukvić, Iva Mihalić, Adrian Pezdirc, Parth Thakerar MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:29 Release Date: 3/3/22 (Netflix) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 3, 2022 The mystery of The Weekend Away doesn't so much unravel as it collapses. The screenplay by Sarah Alderson, based on her novel, does possess a certain amount of logic and consistency and intrigue, but that's only until a point. That the point arrives with a fair amount of speed certainly doesn't help, but every twist and turn of the plot causes more damage. The premise and at least the central performance are fine. Beth (Leighton Meester), a woman from London without a trace of any local dialect, arrives at a city in Croatia (Who cares about specifics?) for a weekend vacation with her best friend Kate (Christina Wolfe). Beth, who's married to Rob (Luke Norris), recently had a baby, and with that change and work, she hasn't had much time for Kate, who's going through a divorce. With her husband watching the baby, Beth is all-in for some one-on-one time with her friend, but Kate, cynical about romance in general and skeptical about Beth's marriage specifically, seems to have some other plans and ideas in store. On their first night out on the town, Kate spends a lot on booze (Thanks to her ex's credit card), tries to get Beth to do some recreational drugs, and even brings over a couple of local men to tempt her friend. Beth hasn't had sex with Rob in about a year, and Kate is convinced she needs a push to get out of what seems to be a dead-end marriage, just as her own was. Meester's performance—soft-spoken and meek in physicality but kind and sort of righteous in spirit—is key here, not only in establishing a certain level of sympathy for a character who's about to go through the wringer, but also in convincing us that someone can be so considerate and naïve to miss or ignore all of the suspicious things and people right in front of her. Beth never seems dumb, in other words, which is a special kind of accomplishment for the actor, considering how many dim and occasionally laughable things have to happen to keep this mystery going. The crux of it is that, at some point between Beth blacking out during the night out and waking up the next morning, Kate goes missing. Beth goes to the police, where her worries are basically dismissed by a rather uncaring cop (played by Amar Bukvić), although there's a woman officer (played by Iva Mihalić) who serves as a counterpoint to his gradually suspicious indifference. Then again, maybe her interest is a reason to suspect her. This is one of those mysteries, in which the through line of the plot—Kate's disappearance, what happened to her, and why it happened to her—turns out to be so relatively simple that Alderson and director Kim Farrant spend most of the story trying to make us suspect one character after another. Some of those possibly involved, such as conveniently and overly helpful cab driver Zain (Ziad Bakri), are so obviously innocent that they have to be faking, or perhaps that's what the filmmakers want us to think. Others, such as the creepy owner (played by Adrian Pezdirc) of the place where Beth and Kate are staying, are so clearly guilty that they have to be innocent, or that's just another part of the constant toying with our perception and expectations. The point is that the movie spends so much time and expends so much effort playing games with who is and isn't involved in what happened to Kate that it never really establishes an actual puzzle to solve, any sense of these characters, or much of a plot for that matter. Everything shifts, not based on what clues are discovered or information is learned, but on a series of apparent whims to make us more confused and uncertain than anything else. There's a stretch of story during which the cops believe Beth might have been involved (She fears she might have been, which at least gives her a reason to withhold evidence and details that might point in her direction), and after a certain period of being jolted back and forth, most will either have guessed the answer by chance or figured out that there's a flip side to the game of drawing attention to most of the characters here. The whole of it more familiar than frustrating, at least. There's also little denying that The Weekend Away becomes sillier (A separate pair of threats are undone by tripping) and more overblown as it progresses. Copyright © 2022 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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