Chris Barsanti has been a Filmcritic reviewer since 2002. So there.It wouldn't do to call Andrew Haigh's emotional tightrope of a film a romance, a distinction it would likely scoff at anyway. One of its two would-be lovers has thing about not having boyfriends while the other seems intrigued by the idea of having one but can't deal with the reality of it. Neither man is sure what to make of this thing they have, so they fill a couple of days with conversation, drugs, and sex while they figure it out. One snarkily mentions Notting Hill near the end of the film, before they admit that they haven't seen it. If Haigh has seen it, or any other romantic film of the past few decades, it doesn't show in his naturalistic treatment of a scenario that could all too easily have ended with a shameless dash through the rain and a breathless declaration of goony, star-eyed love. Unlike most romances, this isn't a bifurcated story where we follow each character in their own corner as they're inexorably maneuvered into each other's arms. (Also, unlike most romances, it's set in the decidedly unromantic burg of Nottingham, with nary a cute café or cozy breakfast nook to be seen.) It's really the tale of Russell (Tom Cullen, downcast like a stormcloud that occasionally shows glimpses of sun), a drifting soul who barely seems to inhabit the quiet high-rise flat that he's filled with tchotchkes of a different era. The retro furniture and grandmother teacups are there ostensibly for being cheap charity-shop buys, but they also indicate a longing for a past more substantial than his orphaned, foster home-raised self ever had -- and possibly a quite conventional future. He's not wholly present, even when popping into a party, where Haigh's camera stays tight on Russell's face as he deflects conversation and intimacy, even with his straight best friend, whom he's technically out to but can't talk about anything serious with. Something seems to break in Russell the morning after the party, which he leaves early in order to hit a gay club. Waking up the next morning with Glen (Chris New), the target of his adoring nighttime gaze, Russell looks wary but hopeful. That's when Glen, a presumptuous sort who tries to pass off bad manners as liberated thinking, informs Russell that he's part of an art project. Glen then jabs a recorder at Russell like a weapon, the two of them still barely dressed and tangled in last night's sheets, and asks him to tell the story of their meeting. It will show up in Glen's art project, he says, if Russell "makes the grade." The morning-after turns into the afternoon which turns into the evening and soon it's a lost weekend of circuitous talk and exploratory sex, punctuated by booze, drugs, and expanding levels of introspective revelation. Not too far into it all, Glen mentions to Russell that he's leaving at the end of the weekend for an arts program in America. For two years.
Haigh gives his two performers room to explore here, but keeps the film on track. While primarily a conversation piece, it doesn't feel claustrophobic or intentionally theatrical. The clean and airy cinematography has a timeless sensation, capturing the misty, small-city normality of Nottingham like a series of well-executed still photographs. Russell and Glen are also expertly depicted in a few precise strokes. Glen's airy assumptions of privilege (he works in an art gallery and is quite impressed with the words constantly belting from his lips) are captured perfectly. But it's Russell's quietude, his fear of being seen publicly kissing Glen, that carries the weight of the film. Haigh can't quite fully deliver here the crushing emotive sensations of this lost weekend, but what he can do is present the image of two lovers approaching a precipice that they both want to fling themselves off of. There's a white-knuckle quality to this affair that's as fearsome as it is beautiful.
