Review of Friday Night (2002) by Anonymous User — 18 Dec 2009

Helloooo, Claire Denis. Word on the street is that her great body of work over the last decade are only rivaled by the best of the best, so I chose 2002's Friday Night to pop my Denis cherry.

There's a story going on, but it's almost secondary: a French woman is in the process of moving out, and on the way to dinner with friends she encounters a man looking for a ride and they get stuck in a traffic jam, and the romance begins. I also heard that Denis typically casts really hot leading ladies in her films and she's not messing around with this Valerie Lemercier, who is quite stunning in a totally appealing, earthy way.

It's unconventional in that unlike most movies, it doesn't go through peaks and troughs or the buildup-climax-resolution formula, but in the insignificant and typical Denis finds the poetic and dream-like. The erotic scenes are inevitable, and it's not quite the climax of the movie, so to speak, as it just...happens in an oddly ordinary way. She embraces intimacy, shooting the scenes with extreme close-ups, follows along movement, and lets the scenes linger for longer than most may hope. Example, for the first five minutes Lemercier marks boxes, takes a bath, and other seemingly uninteresting things, with no semblance of a narrative going on. But Friday Night is more about finding beauty in the daily grind of life, even things we take for granted, than actually telling a story. It's an empowering, optimistic message, and most will find this style grating and unbearable, but I was so immersed into this impossibly blissful atmosphere that I felt effortlessly carried along with the ride. I look forward to more.