Did you ever watch 24 and marvel how Jack Bauer is the only person in Southern California who never gets stuck in traffic?  The glaring lack of reality in that television show works to save viewers from watching dull, menial tasks like going to the bathroom, being caught in a bear trap while being hunted by a mountain lion, or...umm...getting stuck in traffic.

If 24's writers stuck to a more realistic storyline, they might come up with something like Claire Denis' Friday Night.  It's a film about a woman named Laure (Valirie Lemercier) who finds herself in the middle of a huge Paris traffic jam (thanks to a public transportation strike) and ends up meeting and screwing a stranger named Jean (Vincent Lindon).  And that's pretty much it.  There's hardly any dialogue, the story unfolds almost in real time, and the thought that Night is based on a book just makes me want to beat my fists into my head.

Emmanuhle Bernheim, who has worked on two Frangois Ozon pictures (Under the Sand and the upcoming Swimming Pool), adapts Night's story from her own novel.  When we first meet Laure, she's packing up her things because she's about to move in with her boyfriend.  Then the biggest gridlock in foreign cinema since Songs From the Second Floor catches up with her, and Laure starts re-examining her life.  Or at least that's what I think we're supposed to assume she's doing, since there isn't any dialogue.  As she's about to nod off, Jean knocks on the window and asks for a ride because it's pouring outside.  The sparks quickly, but wordlessly, fly.

Night is a little like Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood For Love, only without the good stuff.  I know a lot of people are going to say us unsophisticated Yanks won't be able to understand the film because we're all a bunch of knuckle draggers, but there just doesn't seem to be anything to Night.  Still, Night is a very pretty film, as Denis (Trouble Every Day) reunites with photographer Agnés Godard to make Night a very dreamlike experience (especially if you fall asleep while you're watching it).  Godard tightly frames just about everything, causing the film to be very cramped and very claustrophobic.  And every fan of foreign cinema knows that Denis and Godard know a thing or two about shooting the naked human body.  But why does it take Jean longer to get undressed than it takes most guys to deliver their payload?

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