Weekend (1967) Plot Summary Explained

Both Roland and Corinne each keep a secret lover and want to murder their spouse to secure Corinne's inheritance from her dying father. They view murder as a necessary tool to claim the fortune, viewing the trip as an opportunity to carry out their plans under the guise of a normal weekend visit.

Foreshadowing: Early in the film, their whispered discussions about inheritance and murder reveal their mutual deception before they even leave.

• Roland
• Corinne
• murder plot
• inheritance
• secret lovers
• conspiracy

Their Facel-Vega is destroyed in a violent collision on the road to Corinne's parents' home. This crash serves as both a literal and metaphorical breaking point, it strips away their remaining control and thrusts them into a series of strange encounters, marking the shift from tense plotting to chaotic unraveling.

Foreshadowing: The journey begins with tension and whispered accusations, building toward this violent disruption of their plans.

• Facel-Vega
• car crash
• collision
• road trip
• breakdown

The film deliberately incorporates metafictional moments where characters question whether they are in a film or reality. A driver directly asks Roland this question, and intertitles appear to comment on the action. This is Godard's signature style, breaking the fourth wall to highlight the artificiality of cinema and the constructed nature of the narrative itself.

Foreshadowing: The self-aware moments increase as the story becomes more chaotic, reinforcing the film's critique of bourgeois theater.

• metafiction
• film within film
• Godard
• reality
• fourth wall

After arriving at the house, they discover Corinne's father has died, but her mother refuses to share any inheritance with them. Frustrated and having traveled so far, they murder the mother to claim their portion of the spoils and continue their journey. The act represents the complete collapse of their pretensions and the fragility of family bonds.

Foreshadowing: Their earlier discussions about murder being necessary foreshadows this willingness to kill even family.

• Corinne's mother
• murder
• inheritance
• family
• killing

They encounter a group calling themselves the Front de Libération de la Seine et Oise, hippie revolutionaries who sustain themselves through theft and cannibalism. Led by Le Chef, they represent the film's extreme critique of bourgeois society, turning the couple's consumerist violence back on them in the most brutal way possible.

Foreshadowing: The film progressively shifts from satirical comedy to increasingly grim violence as the couple descends further from their privileged world.

• revolutionaries
• cannibals
• hippies
• Front de Libération
• Le Chef
• political violence

During an escape attempt from the revolutionary group, Roland is killed. His fate is particularly gruesome, the group chops him up and cooks him, literally consuming him as food. This brutal conclusion delivers the film's starkest critique of bourgeois complacency, showing the upper class literally devoured by the forces their own excesses have created.

Foreshadowing: The revolutionaries' cannibalism is established earlier as their method of survival, making this outcome inevitable once they capture the couple.

• Roland death
• cannibalism
• cooked
• eaten
• gruesome ending
• fate

After the car crash, Roland and Corinne wander through a series of bizarre encounters that parody class struggles and social hierarchies. They meet figures from literature and history, including Saint-Just and Emily Brontë, which blur the line between fiction and reality. These surreal vignettes function as destabilizing interludes that critique French society and its historical violence while reflecting the couple's psychological unraveling.

Foreshadowing: These episodes establish the film's shift from realistic satire to something more nightmarish and unpredictable.

• surreal
• vignettes
• Saint-Just
• Emily Brontë
• class struggle
• historical references

The film serves as a relentless critique of bourgeois complacency and consumerist excess. Roland and Corinne embody the corrupt elite, each plotting murder for money while maintaining polite social facades. Their journey through the French countryside exposes the violence inherent in class society, culminating in their destruction by the very radical forces their privileged lifestyle has created. The cannibalism literalizes the metaphorical consumption of the masses by the bourgeoisie.

Foreshadowing: The couple's murder plot and inheritance greed establish their role as representatives of a corrupt system.

• critique
• bourgeois
• consumerism
• class
• society
• capitalism
• social commentary

Godard's Weekend deliberately abandons traditional narrative coherence, using intertitles, self-aware characters, and episodic vignettes to challenge cinematic conventions. This fragmented form mirrors the breakdown of social order depicted in the story, nothing stays controlled, including the film itself. The lack of resolution reflects the film's bleak philosophy: there is no escape from the violence and decay of bourgeois society.

Foreshadowing: The metafictional elements from early on establish that conventional storytelling rules do not apply.

• structure
• Godard
• fragmented
• narrative
• unconventional
• art film