FRIDAY NIGHT (Vendridi soir)
# stars based on 4 stars: 3 Reviewed by: Harvey Karten Wellspring Directed by: Claire Denis Written by: Claire Denis, Emmanuelle Bernheim Cast: Valerie Lemercier, Vincent Lindon Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 3/6/03
An online column last week provocatively asks, "What is the factor that can most endanger a relationship?" Most people would probably say, "boredom," others "lack of money" or perhaps "unusually large differences in culture." The answer is a shocker: mutual lust. The more lust a man and woman have for each other, the more likely that one or both will commit adultery. When you think about that, I suppose it makes sense. One-night stands and also liaisons that go on for longer periods of time could often be the result of strong sexual appetites. In Clare Denis's latest film "Friday Night," the talented French director examines an unanticipated connection made between a woman and a man at a time that some say might be expected, while others would counter that the timing makes good sense. The film, which has minimalist dialogue and no narration but sporting a powerful and apropos score explores an event during a single night in the life of a woman that a hyperactive press kit might describe as something that "will change her life forever," but while memories might arise on a cloudy Sunday while having croissants and coffee in bed is unlikely to have much bearing on her long-term commitment to another man.
The serious film buff would expect such a minimalist approach from Ms. Denis, whose stunning "Beau Travail" is a cut-to-the- bone reverie about men in a foreign legion regiment in Djibouti a work devoid of the frantic activity of a Hollywood war movie like "Full Metal Jacket."
Denis's photographer, Agnes Godard, takes us into a Paris traffic jam that could have come out of Jean-Luc Godard's "Weekend," an evening that finds the City of Lights at a virtual standstill from a transit strike. Inhabiting each auto is an individual or a group, all wrapped up in their own special problems, one of which is the result of an accident that finds two men with frayed nerves ready to kill. Laure (Valerie Lemercier), for example, faces a stressful change in her life as she has just packed up her furniture and is on her way to her boyfriend's place to settle in for the long haul. When she picks up a stranger who is lucky enough to be walking, Jean (Vincent Lindon), a middle- aged man who seems calm and self-assured amid a coterie of unhappy motorists, she wastes no time with idle chit-chat nor does he appear to mind the relative silence. Though there is no indication that she is unhappy about her choice of a steady, a man who is not introduced to us in this film, Valerie and Jean attract each other like a pair of magnets, leading the two of them almost without a word to a nearby hotel room.
"Friday Night" relies almost exclusively on visuals: in Denis's hands we need nothing more save for the soundtrack which includes not only Shostakovich's Symphonie De Chambre opus 110a but also Line Renaud and Dean Martin's "Two Sleepy People" the latter aptly describing the frazzled and exhausted duo whose mutual attraction leads them to the seemingly inevitable room.
Though neither performer is physically attractive in the Hollywood sense of the term, the two capture our sympathy not the least because most of us in the audience ourselves looking not much like Tom Cruise or Kim Basinger can imagine being in their shoes and (admit it) have had similar fantasies that never quite came to reality. An American director might have the audience wondering when Jean will do something that would make Laure regret listening to the radio announcer who urges motorists to give lifts to strangers, but at no time does Denis make such an action plausible. Instead we are caught up in the reverie, what might have been a dream that visits Laure as she dozes off in the car after a grueling day of packing for the big move.
Without much dialogue (little is needed), what's left is pure emotion. When Laure wraps her arms around a man she has been with for just a few hours, we can imagine that her sudden lust has been brought about in part by her view that this is her last night of freedom, in part by the stress of changing from her own apartment to a new place, but most of all by the ineluctable presence of human passion.
Not Rated. 90 minutes. Copyright 2003 by Harvey Karten at Harveycritic@cs.com
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