Weekend with Kate

Weekend with Kate (Australian premiere: 29 November 1990).

Catherine plays: Kate Muir.

Let's be quite honest here, Weekend with Kate is not a very good movie. I first watched it on video more than ten years ago now, when I found it on Ebay after remembering that both Catherine and Colin Friels starred in this a number of years before they were in Water Rats together. It has since been released on DVD. While the idea for Weekend with Kate isn't all that bad, the script and the acting at times let it down quite badly. I read that it was filmed in only three weeks, and it does show in the lack of quality in the movie (which is probably part of the reason why the acting isn't the best, it's not a lot of time to rehearse or get to know fellow cast members).

Kate is married to Richard (Friels), and she wants to have a baby with him, so she organises a weekend away at their holiday home (set in Palm Beach, where Home and Away is filmed). What she doesn't know is that Richard is having an affair with Carla (Helen Mutkins, one of Catherine's NIDA classmates) and plans to use the weekend away to break up with his wife. Things don't go quite to plan for either of them though, when Richard, who works in the music industry, is forced to 'baby sit' Jon Thorne (Jerome Elhers), an English rockstar, for the weekend. Jon takes a bit of a liking to Kate, who isn't very impressed about having to "entertain Richard's guests". One night however, Kate gets a little upset with Richard and begins to drink with Jon on the beach. They have sex, which, the next morning, Kate is obviously quite uncomfortable about. Richard soon finds out about it, and he and Jon fight - literally. Kate gets in her car and almost has an accident. Richard seems to realise somewhere during all of this that he still loves his wife, and later that night, they make up. When Carla unexpectedly turns up the next day, Kate finds out about their affair, so she leaves with Jon. But Richard is not willing to let Kate go, and comes up with a rather interesting (and somewhat corny) way to get her back.

The ending of the movie is quite sloppy, as it is almost like the writers decided to leave it unfinished. In my opinion, it should have finished about five minutes earlier. I guess one of the only positives of Weekend with Kate is the music, Paul Kelly is an Australian singer and song writing legend!

Catherine won an AFI award in 1990 for her performance in this film, though the awards were presented before the movie was released.