Both titles, which performed particularly well when they were previewed during the 2014 European Film Festival in May this year, make a welcome return to the Cinema Nouveau circuit. The Broken Circle Breakdown and Le Week-End both release on Friday, 25 July at the four art-house cinema sites in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town.
The theme of love was explored during the festival and, while both these titles focus on this theme, their take on it offers two entirely different perspectives.
The Broken Circle Breakdown, directed by Felix Van Groeningen, was nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2014 Academy Awards, and is also the recipient of a number of other awards and nominations, including two awards at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival and awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actress (Veerle Baetens) at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.
This Flemish film (with English sub-titles) tells of the love story between Elise (Veerle Baetens), a tattoo artist, and Didier (Johan Heldenbergh), a bluegrass singer. The film chronicles their lives over a period of approximately seven years – the highs and the lows, the joy and pain, the love and anguish.
Elise and Didier fall in love at first sight. She has her own tattoo shop and he plays the banjo in a bluegrass band. They bond over their shared enthusiasm for American music and culture, and dive headfirst into a sweeping romance that plays out both on and off the stage. However, when an unexpected tragedy hits their newly-formed family, everything they know and love is tested.
The Broken Circle Breakdown, an intensely moving portrait of a relationship from beginning to end, propelled by an energetic soundtrack of foot-stomping bluegrass, is a romantic melodrama of the highest order.
Classification for this film is pending, and the running time is 1hr, 50mins.
Watch the trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrBgSZIQAz0
The other film releasing at Cinema Nouveau on 25 July is a comedy drama from British director, Roger Michell. Le Week-End examines love through the eyes of an older married couple , who are seeking to revitalise their marriage – and their love for one another.
Le Week-End stars Jim Broadbent as Nick and Lindsay Duncan as Meg, a British couple in their late fifties, who live in Birmingham where Meg is a biology teacher and Jim lectures in philosophy at a rather unfashionable university.
One a weekend getaway to Paris, the city of love, the couple is hopeful of rediscovering some romance in their long-lived marriage. Jim has booked them into the same hotel where they enjoyed their honeymoon thirty years earlier – however, like their marriage, the hotel now seems very different to their older eyes, and Meg refuses to stay in it.
Meg feels she deserves a better life but, at crucial moments, we see how insecure, vulnerable and bereft she would be without her husband of many years. During their stay in Paris, the couple run into an old friend of Nick’s from his Cambridge days, Morgan (Jeff Goldblum), who lives in Paris, is a famous and rich media superstar and whose young French wife is expecting their first child.
As things start to unravel for the couple over the romantic weekend gone horribly wrong, Morgan acts as the catalyst for things to come.
Screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, Le Week-End is a beautifully observed, funny and poignant story about the nature of love and commitment, when a husband and wife yearn to recapture their youthful fearlessness, lack of responsibility and idealism. It is a delicious ‘portrait of marriage’ with all the sensitive imperfections of a life of partnership.
The film carries a 13L classification and the running time is 1hr, 33mins.
Watch the trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DkFQKP1FUU
For more information and to make bookings for these two films, visit www.cinemanouveau.co.za or sterkinekor.mobi, or call our Ticketline on 0861-MOVIES (668 437). Follow us on Twitter @nouveaubuzz or on Facebook at Cinema Nouveau. You can also download the Ster-Kinekor App on any Nokia, Samsung Android, iPhone and Blackberry smart phone for updates, news and to book from your mobile.
