Friday Night

Vendredi Soir (2002), directed by Claire Denis, is a film about two

residents of Paris who come together because of a horrendous,

citywide traffic jam. The movie is slow and deliberate, but not

boring. The film's power derives from the interaction of two

attractive strangers who are temporarily trapped--and yet

liberated--by the fact that mass transit is shut down, and auto

traffic has come to a standstill.

Valérie Lemercier portrays Laure, a young woman who has left her

apartment to move in with her lover. Ms. Lemercier owes a great

debt to Ms. Denis, who could have cast the part with a more

traditionally beautiful woman. (In the U.S., the role would probably

have gone to Demi Moore.) Instead, the director chose an actor

who is undeniably beautiful, but in an interesting, complex way.

Lemercier is an outstanding actor, and she is given enough time

on screen to demonstrate her professional skills.

Don't see this film if you're looking for excitement, graphic sex,

violence, or a strong narrative story line. See this film if you want to

view Paris--and human relationships--portrayed in a serious, but

almost dreamlike, lyrical, fashion.

Claire Denis' films may look slick to the jaundiced American audiences, since many fashion and advertising makers employ devices that create Denis-esque effects. Beau Travail was unfortunately evocative of Bruce Webers' damp pretty man ad campaigns and books, yet the power of the film remained when the memory of the packaging had faded.

This film was beautiful to my innocent eye, as it wistfully, abstractly spreads out night-time Paris as a diorama into which drivers and passengers are thrown during a harrowing transit strike. The intimacy that occurs in the film between strangers is intensely depicted - close close close and the camera - as with Beau Travail - is genius. The film made me sad to consider the sense of loneliness inside of that city and my own during the night, yet I am pleased to have seen such a lovely rendering of that idea. I saw the film last night and the pictures are still downloading inside today, my mark of great films.

Finally, THANK YOU Claire Denis for never being ponderously intellectual during appearances and for not feeling that you need 3 hour films to make art. This film - in less than 90 minutes - is more profound than any of the 3 hour French films made.

I guess that I must be living under a rock because it took me this movie to bask in the luminescence of Claire Denis (and Agnes Godard). I stumbled across Beau Travail in the beginning of my cinephile journey and her baroque images and elliptical editing style just flew past my head. Then, I saw 35 shots of rum a few years back and it did make me sit up, especially "The Nightshift" sequence, but I still felt that her magic lacked a dramatic gravity.

But this film just blew me away. This is poetry of a heightened experience so ephemeral and intense that it is remembered in fractured glances and gestures, in hazy motives and unclear desires, in actions that are incomplete ellipses, in the associations and impressions of the surroundings that stand in as a placeholder of the actual experience.

Highly recommended.

Claire Denis sure knows the French woman's mentality. She is very sly in presenting us this story, that on the surface tells us one thing, but deep down, it has nothing to do what we are actually watching.

The transit strike plot, with Laure sitting in traffic and going nowhere, is played too long. We all get the idea of the boredom and frustration of the driver caught in similar circumstances. That part of the film can drive the viewer nuts, since nothing happens.

Laure doesn't feel any remorse into picking up Jean, who is obviously stranded, or is he?. Their conversation doesn't reveal anything, yet, one can feel where this is leading to: somewhere where Laure and Jean can copulate to their hearts content.

The clue of what's to come takes place after they have an espresso at the cafe. Jean asks for change to go downstairs to the vending machine for a 4 condom pack. Oh la la... Jean is not a casual sex offender, he must protect himself, as well as the woman he takes to bed. Casual meetings such as these can be very dangerous!

The scenes in the hotel are well staged. In fact, there is nothing shocking, or done in bad taste. When Laure and Jean are making out, their behavior is very chaste, without French kisses, (I wonder if Pres. Bush would call them Liberty kisses?...) is a let down. But Jean and Laure do it very stylishly and with decorum.

Jean, obviously, is not a one-woman man. After all he has more condoms in his pocket and when he is in the pizzeria, he spots another woman who makes it known she wants to play with him downstairs.

At the end of the film we watch Laure leave the hotel room running into the deserted streets with a grin on her face. She'll go now to her own lover as though nothing had ever happened that night. She is a woman empowered by her own will to have fun, yet not take it too seriously, or hurt anyone. Perhaps she's laughing at her own sense of adventure having done something that perhaps no one will ever know.

Both of the principals are very effective. Veronique Lemercier and Vincent Lindon play very well together. The director is perhaps telling us that there is still hope for all of us, non movie star types, to have fun and meet a partner for the night, have great sex on the next transit strike, if we are in Paris.

Claire Denis uses close-ups better than anybody since Sergio Leone. Agnes Godard is amazing. A Denis film almost always has a human warmth few other filmmakers achieve with their films, even if it's their intention to do so. All these qualities are present in "Vendredi soir", yet I felt it was significantly weaker than the three Denis films I had already seen: "Chocolat", "Nenette et Boni", and "Trouble Every Day". It's not that the film is 'slight' or that it doesn't have much narrative drive that bothered me, either, but that it never took on the sort of gravity I thought it should have. Moreover, the film falls apart toward the end, when it should have come together. The opening stages of the film, with Godard's camera taking us through Paris were absolutely gorgeous, the first few scenes after the two main characters meet were great, especially the brilliant impressionistic montage after Jean unexpectedly takes over driving Laure's car (accompanied by a Hitchcockian musical score), but when they actually get together and have sex the film just falls apart. Here's a film which is technically brilliant (direction, cinematography, acting, Dickon Hinchliffe's great debut score), formally interesting, but which just doesn't have enough in it to justify even its short length.