Schmoozing at the Film Fest

This past weekend was the tenth anniversary of the Boulder International Film Festival, which meant that filmmakers and extreme movie junkies from all over flocked to our neck of the woods—Boulder, that is—to movie up. All that was missing were the stars.

Upon hearing that I would get to attend the weekend with a press pass, I was a touch giddy. Living in the Boulder area for most of my life, I’d been around the festival before (see also the time I waited in line for hours to see James Franco walk the red carpet). But having a pass this year shed a whole new light on the experience for me—it was my golden ticket into anything (and everything) I wanted to see or attend. That’s right, I was going to be hobnobbing with the stars and networking like heck. Or so I thought.

In reality, there wasn’t much hobnobbing at all. I showed up to the VIP Filmmaker’s Reception at the Bitter Bar on Friday evening expecting to meet directors and producers galore. Instead, I mostly chatted with very nice, yet very un-famous Boulder citizens who had shelled out a couple hundred bucks for a festival pass that would get them into such gatherings. Not deterred by this though, I smugly walked past everyone waiting in line at the Boulder Theater that night to get a prime seat for Le Week-End.

The French/British film is directed by Roger Mitchell (you know him from Notting Hill and Hyde Park on Hudson), and follows an academic couple from London as they spend a weekend in Paris. But thirty years after they honeymooned in the capitol city, Meg (Lindsay Duncan) and Nick (Jim Broadbent) find that everything middle-age has brought them—a grown son moving back home, older bodies, knowing how to push each other’s buttons—puts a damper on any rekindling of romance. Duncan and Broadbent beautifully portray their characters as they bring this bittersweet story alive about changing love and mid-life crossroads. Genuine and poignant, this is a film that leaves you wishing for more like it.