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Like the other films of French director Claire Denis,
Friday Night exists in a realm of glances, skin, and dreams. Working with basic elements, Denis (whose previous films were the hypnotic
Beau Travail and the scary
Trouble Every Day) fashions an often-wordless liaison between a woman caught in a huge Paris traffic jam (there's a transportation strike going on) and the stranger she picks up in her car. Their brief encounter is the simplest of situations, but Denis grounds it in the exactly realized locations of their courtship: car interior, hotel room, late-night restaurant. And, of course, in the expressive faces of the two actors: Valerie Lemercier, best known for her comic roles, and Vincent Lindon (late of
Chaos). The dreamlike rhythms of the piece will undoubtedly defeat some viewers, but if you give yourself over to the movie's spell, it will come alive.
--Robert Horton
A woman (Valérie Lemercier) in Paris preparing to move in with her boyfriend the next morning gets stuck in a traffic jam, allows a strange man (Vincent Lindon) into her car, and goes to bed with him in a hotel without exchanging more than a few words. The movie is about a momentary connection made in the night, but the director Claire Denis's technique, which depends on non-continuous cutting, produces disconnection. In the end, not much happens between these two. The movie is dark-toned and rather furtive, its emotional transactions attenuated to the point of nullity. A perfect one-night stand is no doubt a familiar fantasy, but this movie has been made without fantasy. In French. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
