In Vendredi Soir Laure is packing up her possessions, preparing to move in with her boyfriend. Taking a break she sets off in her car to meet friends for dinner and gets caught up in a monumental traffic jam. With Paris at a standstill and everyone dispossessed of their normal routine it is as if real life itself is suspended.
The tension of the traffic jam gives way to a sense of Laure's self-containment inside her car as she muses on the sights and sounds of the metropolis around her. Then an altogether different kind of tension arises when a self-assured, handsome stranger climbs into her passenger seat.
With minimal dialogue and barebones knowledge of the lead characters lives outside of this one night, the film is propelled by an impressionistic film style. Blurred lights, jumbled sounds and playful cinematic devices bring us inside the mind of our protagonist and at times you wonder whether the entire film is the fantasy of a woman craving to feel the full force of her own desire through a brief encounter with a stranger.
Vendredi Soir is a Film programme that first aired in 2003 and has been classified a 15 certificate.
