2002 ‘Vendredi soir’ Directed by Claire Denis
Paris, 1995. Laure is about to meet friends for dinner. But on her way out, she discovers that the entire city is stalled by a massive transit strike. When a handsome stranger offers her a ride, Laure takes a highly charged, impossibly erotic detour.
i can’t remember being more touched or enthralled during a recent moviegoing experience, even just watching cars at standstill. sitting so close to the screen, witnessing gestures of romance so upclose — i’ve never been so fully embraced by tenderness on screen 😩
35mm. BAM.
Let us all take a moment to appreciate a film that shows people purchasing condoms before their random sexual encounter.
Thank you.
There's a story here, a brief interlude of romantic eroticism, but it's secondary to the glimpses we have of a remarkably lovely night in Paris. Stopped in traffic, Laure is surrounded by faces friendly and (mostly) unfriendly, and Denis lingers on each of them to give us just enough details to fill in stories of our own creation, little prompts to stir our imaginations. "Oh, of course the trucker has a dog..." we think to ourselves. "Surely, it must be lonely driving those long miles." And from there we move on to the next passenger (it's unfair to…
The first half of this, up to when Valérie Lemercier and Vincent Lindon enter the hotel, is easily among my favorite things Denis has ever done. The whole build-to-night pre-title card sequence is extremely bold and gorgeous, Lemercier vibing out by herself in her car is a pleasant mood. It’s fun to be out at night, and people watch, and see what’s happening, and Denis totally gets it—everyone here is just rolling with it. The colors are extremely pleasant to look at, and she somehow manages to make traffic look sexy.
I used to think all the extreme close-ups of body parts were about abstraction and defamiliarization, and that’s part of what’s happening, but the primary agenda is actually conveying…
Sex with strangers done Denis-style.
Fits snuggly within the one-night stand genre. With Denis behind the wheel, this thing becomes sensorial to the max, observational to a tee, and filled with all sorts of evocative details that accompany the erotic fantasy.
For as immersive as her visuals are, I just didn't feel immersed this time around. While she remains adept to cinema's narcotized, erotic potential, with Agnes Godard's ethereal compositions doing the heavy lifting, there just isn't enough insight or emotion here to hold onto.
Too flimsy for my taste.
Laure: "I didn't hear where you wanted to go?"
Jean: "Leave me where you want."
Like Roman Polanski's "Bitter Moon", but without the darkness, Claire Denis's "Friday Night" (French: "Vendredi Soir") is a beautifully filmed French romance that speaks many truths about the elliptical nature of love. The film follows a young 30's or so French woman, Laure, (Valérie Lemercier) that is stuck in her car at night in citywide traffic jams caused by a public transportation strike. She feels lonely, tired, and has already packed to move on to a new life. Her friends having husbands and babies to take care of doesn't help out her depressed state of mind. Feeling guilty having passed on helping a Parisian in…
silly that someone even bothered with 4D cinemas etc when the sheer tactility of any claire closeup of bodies has them beat 🥰
(also..restorations...streaming...a blu ray boxset of claire’s earlier films..instead of the shitty warped old dvdrips that are currently the only real available versions of 75% of her filmography?? would literally love to see it)
silly that someone even bothered with 4D cinemas etc when the sheer tactility of any claire closeup of bodies has them beat 🥰
(also..restorations...streaming...a blu ray boxset of claire’s earlier films..instead of the shitty warped old dvdrips that are currently the only real available versions of 75% of her filmography?? would literally love to see it)
I had the feeling watching this film that I was watching the greatest movie ever made, the only movie that has ever mattered to anyone, the only movie anyone should watch at any given time. It is of course not these things, and so many of those feelings I had are likely due to context and timing, but there is no questioning the scope, detail, and style given to this perfectly conceived movie. The detached coldness of the other Denis films I have seen is replaced here by an effervescent warmth and something akin to the actual joy of life we every once in awhile get to experience.
Looking back, this is outrageously good/underrated and like the perfect counterpart to Trouble Every Day.
sort of irredeemably pleasant in that it’s the kind of movie you’d see with your middlebrow liberal parents at the local single-screen Arthouse Theatre before going out for dinner. i dunno i thought i liked denis more than this but the only scene that did anything for me was the one at the corner store, which had a bit of the finely observed, breathless emotion i look for from CD. otherwise just not much here aside from cishets fucking
LFS #28
Solo porque Claire Denis crea una secuencias increíbles que bien podrían ser sueños grabados le doy 3 estrellas. Pero cómo me aburrió. Me aburrió tanto que casi le doy dos. Pero repito, solo en pensar en ciertas escenas no me lo permito.
Contra the "walk of shame," Denis gives us "the skip of joy"
I loved the vibe of this - the feeling of packing up all your stuff before a move and feeling bittersweet about how empty and plain your apartment now feels; of being stuck in traffic but not minding so much; of wandering a city at night; of being charmed by some new crush, even if you know it's just a fling; of getting pizza after sex at midnight at the only place still open. And Denis' haptic camera, catching close-up glimpses of gesture and texture, is always a joy. But I never really totally connected with these characters or their romance, and overall I felt this would have been a lot stronger at about half the length.
Claire Denis’ Friday Night, an intensely, yet sensitively, realized account of a one-night stand, masterfully builds tension as it shows us its protagonist’s very subjective point of view. The movie begins with dark falling on Paris as the score by Tindersticks member Dickon Hinchcliffe buzzes on the soundtrack, and the effect creates an otherworldly feel from something so ordinary as night falling. By the time the film’s title appears on the screen, there’s something palpable in the air that tells us that this night will be different. There’s something magical and hypnotic about the way that the movie draws the viewer in with so little, but it’s undeniable that it does, and continues to hold us there, spellbound, for much…
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