Friday Night
Director: Claire Denis
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 2.0
Somewhat like a Nicholson Baker novel - interested with the minutiae of life, casting aside big plot points or meaning, leaving you to take the tiny gestures and looks and digressions and configure them in your own head to build your own personal interpretation. Unlike Baker, however, Denis is working with a different medium, and doesn't have all those pages and pages of text to slowly draw you in (Baker's obsessive-compulsive style has a way of drawing you into the finer points and 'seeing' the bigger picture) - she only has individual images that may be nice and pleasant, but strand you if you actually want a regular story with regular characters instead of just highly symbolic moments. It isn't bad, really - I found the first act hypnotic and moody - but there is no pay-off.
