There are very few directors that take us to the edge of what film can do and still leave us with something worthwhile. Such attempts to push the boundaries of film either result in worthwhile experiments or clumsy misfires. Rarely do they result in masterpieces. In this light, Friday Night is like Lynch’s Wild at Heart or Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour. It is a radical departure from traditional cinema that ends up taking us somewhere well worth going.


All Denis does is tell the story of a woman caught in the worst traffic Paris has ever seen. Laure has packed up her apartment and is on her way to move in with her new boyfriend. On the way the radio instructs drivers to be kind to those who are having to walk because their cars are stuck somewhere and try to share a ride with someone. So she picks up a handsome stranger, their otherwise dull night results in a delicate passionate frenzy, and she continues on her way the next morning. In terms of storyline, this is all pretty typical stuff to viewers familiar with French film. But it is the way Denis tells this simple story that poetic divergences start to emerge. The film is basically a monotone catalog of nocturnal urban perceptions; a nightscape that her characters get lost in together. There may be a few bits of dialogue over the course of the entire film, but words are a tangent to the subjective investigation of Laure’s unexpected desire.


At times the film slips into rote manipulation of its elements. A number will dance from left to right across a license plate and drop into place. Laure will leave her car to make a phone call and her car will disappear. Frantic, the viewer is as dislocated as Laure from her space of security and comfort until the visual and emotional balance of the film is restored. And as the film grows in intensity we come to find that Denis has been doing little more than reproducing the set of emotions that accompany the spur of the moment romance, she describes in images the set of feelings that attends Laure’s climactic moment of intimacy. Denis is all about using film as a medium of emotive exercise, and Friday Night addresses the sanctity of this impulsive moment.


But I say “sanctity” with trepidation. The film ends on a soul-less affair between two strangers, and the last shot runs into a freeze frame of Laure skipping down the street after leaving her one night stand at the hotel. With this 400 Blows finality, Denis allows us to commit adultery with film against reality, and one skips thier way out of the theater with nary a moment of moral reprehension. Friday Night, just like the unique genre of film that it is influenced by, has the power to lull the viewer into this sort of listlessness. Whatever is going on in Friday Night it seems to allow for more readings than it has been given credit for.