Friday Night unfolds like Claire Denis’ rebuke against most on-screen romances. In particular, she seems frustrated with two-handers like Before Sunrise, films where conversation and shared interests are the driving forces behind a shared connection. Like Richard Linklater’s beloved romance, Denis’ film follows two strangers over the course of one evening in a gorgeous European city. The key difference, however, is that all the dialogue is incidental to instinctual, wordless desire.
There is a long opening sequence before Laure (Valérie Lemercier) meets Jean (Vincent Lindon), and most of it unfolds in traffic. Laure is pushing forty, and she is about to move into her boyfriend’s place. A transit worker strike upends her plans, and seemingly everyone else who lives in Paris. Hours unfold in her car, with a DJ softly suggesting that Parisians should help each other by offering strangers a ride. This breakdown of the social contract — the idea that any pedestrian could suddenly become a passenger — creates an opportunity for unusual intimacy. Denis and her longtime cinematographer Agnès Godard reflect that possibility in their camera placement. The film suggests the avenues of Paris are a nightclub where everyone/anyone could hookup, with the added rush of an unusual context.
When Jean asks to sit in Laure’s passenger seat, it’s almost perfunctory. They make little attempt at small talk and are polite to a fault. As they spend more time together, they form a sense of trust, as opposed to common interests. Laure leaves Jean in the car for a phone call, and she assumes the worst when she returns, and it is no longer there. Jean had simply moved it, and that is enough. The relief of finding each other again is what sparks a night of exploration, both in the sensual and sexual sense. In most films, Laure and Jean would dance around the idea they spend the night. Friday Night understands adults are not always coy, so almost silently they purchase condoms and find a hotel.
Once again, Denis opts for few establishing shots. We never get much sense of Laure and Jean’s hotel room, but then again, neither do they. Denis has more interest in how their bodies bend and contort against one another. Her camera is a series of extreme close-ups, often to the point where it is unclear who is kissing or caressing who. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this all could be tedious — maybe nauseatingly close, or downright pornographic. Denis and her team avoid those trappings by having Friday Night reflect erotic possibility. What can be more thrilling than your lover touching you in the way you did not know you needed? To Denis, the answer is “nothing,” and so her film culminates with a constant stream of those moments.
Lemercier and Lindon are not your typical romantic leads. They move and act with a sense of weary wisdom, and while we learn little about their characters’ interiority, their performances are studies in dormant erotic possibilities that bubble toward the surface. So much of what they share is an unspoken secret, especially in scenes where they are in public because strangers assume they are a couple, even married. This secret is almost a game, which adds an interesting element to their shared sense of trust. As for Laure’s boyfriend, he barely registers as a plot element, and that is the point. Denis has little interest in traditional depictions of infidelity and guilt. Adults can make choices for themselves, and so Denis tries to imagine how these people might behave when no one around them watches what they do, or cares.
In her long filmography, Friday Night might be considered a minor work. Its stakes are low, and her characters are deliberately slight. But like all her films, Denis expects a lot from her audience, letting go of traditional storytelling elements so we can operate on her wavelength. In that sense, by showing what sexual attraction between anonymous adults might look like, this is arguably the purest expression of her sensibilities.
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