Vendredi Soir (2002)

Essential Viewing

France

Feature Film

Original Title: Vendredi soir

Director: Claire Denis

Writers: Emmanuèle Bernheim, Claire Denis

Cinematographer: Agnès Godard

Composer: Dickon Hinchliffe

Cast: Valérie Lemercier, Vincent Lindon

Denis’s gorgeously sensual adaptation of Bernheim’s novel – depicting a brief encounter between an imaginative, sensitive woman, in the process of moving out of her flat and in with her boyfriend, and a handsome enigmatic stranger, whom she meets when a public transport strike brings Paris to a standstill – is a beautiful, sexy, and evocative work, which combines delightfully intimate photography with a sublimely compiled soundtrack to produce a truly erotic film. Iain.Stott