Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54040 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-02-23
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 88 minutes

Synopsis
Claire Denis' FRIDAY NIGHT, a fantasy that follows a woman into a one-night stand, is an adaptation of the popular novel by Emmanuelle Bernheim who also cowrote the story with Denis. Dreamy and confused, the film begins as Laure (Valerie Lemercier) is packing up her Paris apartment and preparing to move. The chaos of this situation leads directly into the next, as Laure gets in her car and begins to drive across town to a dinner party, only to become stuck in a massive traffic jam. As radio reports continue to stress the drastic and unbreakable gridlock that has Paris literally locked in the streets, a rainstorm blurs Laure's vision. Suddenly, a stranger (Vincent Lindon) approaches on foot, and she offers him a ride. But they're not going anywhere, just smoking, and sitting idle. Eventually Laure calls her friends and cancels on the dinner party, leaving her Friday night wide open to follow whatever path it may take.
A master at building tension and suspense, Denis creates so much chemistry between Laure and her fantasy man that viewers may await a turn to violence or something shockingly unexpected. However, that nervous and mysterious feeling just builds as the ambiguous story of FRIDAY NIGHT continues and a seemingly banal situation--a traffic jam on a rainy Friday--becomes a magical adventure.

Customer Reviews

A typical French film?
If anyone suggests that the French film cliche is a slow drawn out meeting between strangers, with lots of long silences and an opaque plot which does little to explain why the actors do what they do - show them this film. It will prove them right. They will be smugly content and you can get on with watching the far better offerings available.

Thank God it's Friday?
Claire Denis is one of the most admired of contemporary French directors, but the high watermark of her earlier film 'Beau Travail' seems to becoming a hard act to follow. Her previous film 'Trouble Every Day', a gory but not entirely successful tale of cannabilistic vampires with a typically bizarre performance from Vincent Gallo, was not well received.

'Vendredi Soir' is the ostensibly simple tale of two people who meet during the mother of all traffic jams one rainy night in Paris; the subject has the potential for cliche but Ms. Denis is too good a director to fall into those traps, providing a series of arresting and sometimes amusing (animated anchovies on a pizza being the most notable) images. She also avoids the obvious in making the sex scenes entirely unexplicit, and almost abstractly sensual.

Given that this is a film about two characters who never really get to know each other except on a physical or instintive level, it's not surprising the lead actors have a difficult task establishing empathy for their characters. We know a little more of the Woman than the Man, but ultimately it's not enough to truly sustain interest and wisely the film does not outstay its welcome.

For fans of Ms. Denis' work the film is worth watching. Newcomers would be advised to seek out 'Beau Travail' as a better film. And maybe one day we will see a release of her some of her other notable films such as 'Nenette et Boni' and 'J'ai pas sommeil'.