Laure (Valérie Lemercier) is moving out of her Paris apartment today, of all days when there is a public transport strike being staged in the city. Undaunted, she packs away everything she can in boxes, and after throwing out what she can bear to part with (the block's cleaning lady helps herself to the better objects), she loads up her car and prepares to drive off into the night. However, she does not get far, for the drivers of the other vehicles have had precisely the same idea, and as it is a Friday evening the chances of getting to her new place, where her boyfriend may well be waiting for her to join him, now appear increasingly slim. She switches on the radio for company - ah, company, not a bad idea...
Vendredi Soir is not considered one of writer and director Claire Denis's towering achievements, and indeed has been largely dismissed over the years since its initial release which saw it overshadowed by her previous work, Beau Travail, but this was as much a study of female sexuality as that was one of male desire. The difference here was that Laure throws caution to the wind and thinks, well, why not have a guilt-free fling while she is waiting for the traffic to clear? This was not going to have her soul-searching for the duration, though there was a hint that may come later when she is back settled in her normal life once more, it was an examination of the freedom that arrives with impulsive behaviour.
Maybe not even an examination, as Denis was very accepting of her heroine's spur of the moment decision to forget she has a boyfriend for one night, she has an excuse after all that she stayed in a hotel to sleep until morning and the opportunity to resume her journey. Before we got to that point we were offered a glimpse, more than a glimpse really, of Laure's nothing life, no particular hardships but no particular triumphs either, unless holding down a steady relationship was what she could consider her triumph. But Denis was careful only to tell us as much as we needed to know, which in effect was not a great deal since it was the ordinariness of her protagonist that was the most important aspect of her personality.
That way the women in the audience could relate to her, by identifying various elements in her day to day life that they recognised as part of their own, so when we are watching her stuck in that jam and growing increasingly bored, we can perceive this as a metaphor for her experience, the daily grind keeping her imagination at levels tolerable without conjuring up anything wild and wonderful she could be disappointed by when she compared these fantasies with what was happening to her as a matter of course. On the radio, the presenter suggests that those in the traffic allow pedestrians who have been forced to abandon transport, public or otherwise, into their passenger seats as it is a chilly night and better to be moving slowly to their destination in comfort rather than be cold and wet.
So it is that a stranger ends up in Laure's car, we never get his name but he was played by Vincent Lindon, and they exchange the barest minimum of pleasantries, not because he is a grumpy so and so, and neither is she, but because they have an understanding, she will do him a favour and he gratefully accepts. But what if he could do her a favour back? After a mix-up and misunderstanding when she leaves the car to use a telephone booth and thinks the gentleman has stolen her wheels, they begin to get very friendly, again not saying very much but having a connection that is providing some notably satisfying meeting of minds between them, and that comes about through a meeting of their bodies. Denis kept her camera close, with a dreamlike atmosphere which only contributed to the vague plot that was akin to a basic sexual fantasy of the kind Laure would entertain when she was thinking up things to distract her, yet here she was, actually acting it out. There was a tactile quality to each shot that emphasised this familiarity between strangers; it might not amount to much, but it was a relaxing watch. Music by Dickon Hinchliffe.
