I remember SBS programming Friday Night (2002; Vendredi soir) when I was younger and I was intrigued to see it even though, at the time, I didn’t have much awareness of who director Claire Denis was (or had to see Beau Travail at the very least). The sound of the plot – two people meeting one Friday night during a traffic jam in the streets of Paris – hooked me in, sounding a bit similar to one of my favourite, romantic movies, Before Sunrise. Finally having seen Friday Night is quite different from that though, a key difference being that there’s not a lot of talking in the movie. It’s more about imagery and mood, noir-tinged signifiers of urban nightlife: car headlights, rain-speckled windows, glowing neon signs, apartment window lights, late night cafes and restaurants, an empty hotel. We see Valérie Lemercier in the opening scenes boxing up her apartment, ready to move in with a lover, and going out to visit friends for dinner. When she is stuck in a major traffic jam, and time slows down to a crawl, she offers a lift to a stranger played by Vincent Lindon. Again, they exchange a few words but it’s more in the looks and glances. The editing allows images to flow and dissolve freely and the framing takes poetic angles. The smallest details become entire worlds in themselves such as a car idling still in traffic, the dashboard or the radio other smaller worlds within. Later, I was struck with a swelling sense of emotion after the sequence in the late night cafe after all the romantic and sexual tension building up. I thought this was a beautiful movie, one that you either fall in with or resist. The two actors are wonderful, evoking so much in presence and gesture, and their interactions with each other and the spaces they are contained in. I think I loved the first half more – but it’s such a sweet, tender noir romance overall, uncomplicated by unnecessary drama when the tension between two people is enough. Evocative score by Dickon Hinchcliffe from Tindersticks. I can’t believe this is not wider to see or released on Blu-Ray. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 