Directed by
Jamie Blanks
84 minutes
Rated MA
Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
Long Weekend (2008)
Any film that opens with a homecoming husband pointing a harpoon gun at his wife and pretending to shoot her hardly promises subtlety and Jamie Blanks’ remake of Colin Eggleston’s 1977 film of the same name about a married couple on a camping weekend that goes to hell, is as obvious as they come. Whereas Eggleston and his writer Everett De Roche turned in a fine genre film on a modest budget, Blanks, with De Roche again as writer, has managed to negate everything that the former film did so well and add not one thing of merit.In what clearly is intended as a sop to the American market Jim Caviezel is cast in the role originally played by John Hargreaves. Whilst there is no reason given within the film to explain this change of nationality one wonders then why he plays such an ugly one, except perhaps to get Americans to understand his comprehensive insensitivity. If his character is unsympathetic, Claudia Karvan, in the role originally played by Briony Behets comes off not much better as his wife. Karvan has had a solid career playing down-to-earth Aussie chicks but here she yearns for the comforts of Portsea (a seaside resort favoured by Melbourne’s wealthy), attacks any insect she encounters with a spray can and smashes an eagle egg in a fit of pique. OK, so we have to get the message that this pair aren’t exactly tree huggers but that is another problem for this version of the film. Whereas Eggleston’s film with its eco-message was very timely in 1977, set today it lacks all credibility. Who the heck, let alone members of the well-to-do middle class throws plastic bags in the bush, beer bottles in the ocean and cuts down trees for firewood?
If the characters are fundamentally flawed in conception their relationship is no more convincingly portrayed. Once again, one of the strengths of the original film was that the hostility between the couple was so credible. Here it is not. This pair have gone beyond the kind of co-dependent squabbling typical of long-term relationships into a mutual hatred that hardly says “camping trip”. And that brings us to the overall problem with Blanks’ reworking of the original - it is so distasteful on every level. Rather incongruously it is dedicated to the memory of Eggleston who died in 2002, never making another film as good as Long Weekend. All that Blanks’ version does is to remind us of that fact.
DVD Extras: Director’s Production Diary; Descriptive subtitles for the hearing-impaired; Descriptive narration for the vision-impaired.
Available from: Village Roadshow
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