Last Weekend
Description
Patricia Clarkson powers this darkly humorous drama about an aging matriarch who wants everyone to gather one last time at the family’s gorgeous Lake Tahoe manor and reminisce before she puts it on the market. Naturally, no one else in the family, nor their guests, has any interest in doing so. Her sons are too preoccupied with their own busy lives and struggling relationships for any nostalgia, and the dream of a splendid Labor Day weekend denouement dies quickly in a whirlwind of contention, crisis and family dysfunction. Set in the infamous Hurricane Bay house of George Stevens’ 1951 melodrama A Place In The Sun, where Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift once caused fireworks, Last Weekend gracefully captures the soulful transformation in Clarkson’s character as she is forced to let go of her fantasy about everyone’s weekend and attend to the harsh reality brought on by a sudden emergency. Sparked by the angered insight that “motherhood is a shitty deal,” Clarkson falls into an affecting and profound remembrance. Sensing her intimate memories fading into the distance, feeling the burden of age and faced with a fear of being left alone, she somehow opens her heart to the inevitability of impermanence and the natural melancholy of autumn. –Gustavus Kundahl
After studying Art History at Yale and completing four novels, first time co-director Tom Dolby took the advice of his directing partner Tom Williams and turned his unfinished novel Last Weekend into a screenplay. He then secured use of the infamous Lake Tahoe manor as the set from its owners, his parents Ray and Dagmar Dolby.
Tom Williams makes his directorial debut alongside co-director Tom Dolby on Last Weekend. He has produced several films, most recently Bless Me Ultima (2013) and Won’t Back Down (2012).
Film Details
Language English
Year 2013
Premiere World
Runtime 94
Country USA
Director Tom Dolby, Tom Williams
Producer Mike S. Ryan
Writer Tom Dolby
Editor David Gray, Michael R. Miller
Cinematographer Paula Huidobro
Music Stephen Barton
Cast Patricia Clarkson, Zachary Booth, Joseph Cross, Devon Graye, Rutina Wesley, Fran Kranz, Alexia Rasmussen, Chris Mulkey
Print Source Water's End Productions/ office@manage-ment.com/ www.watersendprod.com