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Ever have that feeling of wanting to be with someone with no strings
attached? No money exchanges or backgrounds discussed. Just a night
of passion is all you want. Nothing else is needed. One night stands
are common for some folks who go looking for it when they either
enter a bar or attend a party. In reality, this may or may not have
happened to some, but in Claire Denis’s provocative new film, the
possibility of a night of passion with a comfortable stranger makes
this film worth seeing.
We first meet Laurie (Lemercier), a Parisian, packing up the last
of her possessions as she gets ready to move in with her boyfriend
and make that long-lasting commitment she’s avoided for some time.
Right before she leaves the apartment for good, she goes out to
have dinner with some friends. On her way there, she gets caught
in a huge traffic jam due to a transit strike. None of the lights
seem to be turning green for her and she’s stuck in the streets
for some time. Listening to the radio, she’s encouraged to pick
up folks needing a lift. At some point, she comes across
Jean (Lindon), a middle-age man walking by and offers him a lift.
He seems to know his way around the streets of Paris and offers
to drive away from the traffic. As Laurie watches Jean with his
sense of comfort and awareness, she feels safe with this
strange man. There’s a level of attraction between both individuals
and they decide to explore it.
The beauty this film offers is that not much is spoken throughout
the film. I guess when one has a night of passion with a stranger,
what’s there to be said. Denis has a created an
extraordinary job at making the film look realistic with its story
and level of plausibility. For Laurie, her reluctance to move with in
her boyfriend presents her with this one last “affair”. The camera
angles were generous with the actors, not showing the amount of
nudity one would expect judging by the storyline. Another remarkable
aspect of the film is that the actors themselves are the not usual
“drop dead” georgeous leads we come to expect when we think of film
like this. This is a good thing as we need to connect with these
characters without looking at the outer beauty. If this film was
cast with Denzel Washington and Halle Berry; we would go because
of the leads and not the story? The music in the film captures the
essence of the night as it brings out the emotion the leads so desperately
want to release. That, along with the visual art, serves as secondary
characters in the film. “Friday Night” is a romantic film filled
with poetry and intimacy one may crave for when “the rest is silence”.
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