The haunting – and haunted – queer love of ‘Strangers’
If you’ve read any “Best Of Queer Cinema” article written since 2011, you’re almost certainly familiar with Andrew Haigh’s “Weekend,” even if you’ve never seen it.
A sexy but poignant tale of two men who fall in love during a one-night stand, it’s regularly ranked at or near the top when critics update their lists of such things, and for good reason.
It’s romantic without being sentimental, intelligent without being emotionally distant, and – most important of all – it “gets” contemporary gay love in a way that makes it a touchstone for a generation of queer viewers who came of age in the aftermath of the AIDS years.
That generation is now more than a decade older, and so is Haigh, whose reputation as a filmmaker has only been bolstered in the interim by critical acclaim for subsequent films and his creation of HBO’s “Looking,” the short-lived and controversial queer series that nevertheless found enough loyal fans to warrant a movie-length finale after cancellation.
