Hope can emerge from heartache.
That’s the message that inspires “Long Weekend,” a romantic drama-comedy writer-director Steve Basilone invented after his marriage ended, and he forged an affecting relationship with a woman shortly before his mother died of cancer in 2014.
“I wanted to show that even in the darkest times, there’s light in that, and there’s levity,” Basilone told the Daily News. “There’s opportunity for beauty and love and romance.”
Coming out Friday in theaters, “Long Weekend” follows Bart, a writer struggling to find purpose after his mother dies and his fiancee leaves him.
His outlook starts to change after a chance meeting with an endearing but enigmatic woman named Vienna, who arrives in Los Angeles with no driver’s license, uses only cash and remains vague about her backstory.
The twists and turns intensify as Bart, played by Finn Wittrock, and Vienna, portrayed by Zoe Chao, start to fall in love.
“When I wrote it, it was much more autobiographical,” said Basilone, who battled a chronic illness ahead of his own mother’s death.
“(Bart) was like a conduit for me in many ways — somebody who had just come through a hardship and feels just beaten up and is questioning how to move forward. ... But I think now, he is kind of all of us. He is somebody who has been through a real crap year and is just like, ‘How do I move forward?’ ”
The film marks the directorial debut for Basilone, who’s worked as a writer on comedy series including “Community” and “The Goldbergs.”
He says making “Long Weekend” was a cathartic experience as he emerged from “a very tumultuous period” in his own life.
“I wanted the opportunity just to make something that was mine, and I wanted the opportunity to also show what I had learned in that time,” Basilone said.
“After taking a beating from life, you either form scar tissue and calcify and become hardened like a mollusk, or you become more tenderized and open, more vulnerable. I think that’s what happened to me. It made me more vulnerable.”
Basilone, who has lived in LA for nearly two decades, recalls being in New Haven, Connecticut, to visit his ailing mother when he met the woman who helped get him through the those tough times.
They only hung out “on a few occasions” during that difficult stretch, but the “fleeting joy” they shared had a major impact on Basilone’s life, the filmmaker said.
He wanted Bart and Vienna to experience a similar dynamic in “Long Weekend.”
“What I was trying to do with both of those characters was try to make them both people who were yearning for an escape, and yearning for a reprieve from all the stresses they have in their separate lives,” Basilone said.
“That’s by and large why the movie’s called ‘Long Weekend.’ It’s just kind of this escape from reality, and finding calm and joy in each other.”
