Friday night in Paris and Laure (Valérie Lemercier) is packing up boxes in her apartment, in preparation for moving in the next day with her boyfriend. She gets into her car to go and see friends for dinner, only to find that a public transport strike has forced the city's traffic to a grinding standstill.
As a female radio announcer encourages motorists to give pedestrians a lift, Laure notices a handsome stranger, Jean (Vincent Lindon), walking in the road. This man knocks on her car window, and this chance encounter turns into a joyful one-night stand.
In adapting Emmanuèle Bernheim's first-person novel, writer-director Claire Denis ("Beau Travail", "Trouble Every Day") doesn't probe into her characters' jobs, or their personal relationships - the quietly assured Jean deliberately remaining a blank slate.
Instead, through an impressionistic marriage of visuals and sound, Denis evokes the feelings of being propelled by desire.
She privileges Laure's perspective, by showing us her fantasies of Jean making out with a glamorous young woman (Hélène Fillières) in a restaurant bathroom, or of taking him to meet her friends. Indeed, the whole film can perhaps be read as Laure's fantasy, from the moment Jean is seemingly conjured up out of thin air and appears by her side.
Verbal dialogue in this impressively acted drama is almost non-existent: meaning is conveyed by the close-ups of looks and glances exchanged between the lovers, or by the way that Agnes Godard's mobile camera tracks their bodies moving in mutual attraction within a cramped hotel room.
For those used to the likes of Patrice Chéreau's "Intimacy" and Catherine Breillat's "Romance", "Vendredi Soir" may seem surprisingly discreet. Yet its warmth and tenderness help make for a deeply romantic experience.
In French with English subtitles.
Vendredi Soir (Friday Night) (2003)