Friday Night

Claire Denis' Friday Night (2001) is more immediately rewarding than Denis’ recent and cryptic The Intruder, though the latter film ultimately possesses more lasting insights and individual moments. Whereas that film settles into its ambiguity and dreamy, hazelike atmosphere, though, Friday Night remains firm in its reliance on its narrative, existing as a powerful examination of a one night stand and the events leading up to it.

Laure, a French thirtysomething woman, is stuck in traffic visiting friends and slowly realizing that her excursions around town are merely unsettling her, since everyone she visits has a spouse and children, while she is simply going to be moving into another solitary apartment the next day. This drawling realization is given metaphor as Denis emphasizes the utter standstill of traffic and experience on this evening, where everyone is seemingly resigned to their ennui and the weary night. As such, when a stranger knocks on Laure's car door and asks if she can give him a lift, she is first bewildered at the sight of a man, Jean, willing to shatter the ennui, but then welcomes the diversion. Of course, the film wants to question what happens when diversion becomes something more than a simple brief encounter, while also questioning whether this brief encounter needs to be something more than that.

While the first fifteen minutes or so were purposely aimless but nonetheless less than enthralling, since the boredom is given its own character ad nauseam, everything thereafter had a marvelous mood and atmosphere. The romance is surprisingly erotic, and Laure (Valérie Lemercier) and Jean's (Vincent Lindon) affections toward one another have enough questions that the understated verbal dialogue brings everything into a tighter magnetism. While the traffic bits are carried out a bit long, the scenes examining psychology and personality were highly anchored in beautiful poeticism and human nature. This is a film that understands longing and desire, and Denis communicates it visually rather than through dialogue or verbal expression.

What makes this film, then, are the moments of simple yet subjective clarity. Jean asks for change from a waitress to make a phone call, but then, on a brief stop to the ladies room, Laure notices that the phones take cards, not change. The condom rack beside it, however, does take change. The way in which Denis allows Laure to register this awareness allows for a deeper sense of Laure's own complicity and willingness to engage in this affair. Additionally, the last five minutes of this film with Laure running down the French streets in the early morning are bound together in a beautifully transcendent structure of freedom, vivacity, and hope. And that final smile is the stuff of legends.

Friday Night is a very good viewing experience, and it rewards the energy that the viewer invests in it. Additionally, this is a film that would probably be even better after a second viewing...

Friday Night: 8.5/10