Vendredi soir
2002 film by Claire Denis
Vendredi soir (Friday Night) is a 2002 drama film directed by Claire Denis. The screenplay was written by Claire Denis and Emmanuèle Bernheim, based upon Bernheim's novel of the same name. The film premiered at the 2002 Venice Film Festival.
Plot
The night before moving in with her boyfriend, Laure goes to visit some friends and becomes stuck in traffic due to a Paris transit strike. Inspired by a radio news bulletin which encouraged drivers to car pool and offer rides to strangers, she decides to give a ride to a strange man named Jean she spots in the street and is immediately attracted to him. After cancelling on her friend, the two go for a pizza and then spend the night together in a hotel.
Cast
Valérie Lemercier as Laure
Vincent Lindon as Jean
Hélène de Saint-Père as Marie
Hélène Fillières as The tired woman
Florence Loiret Caille as The pinball girl (billed as Florence Loiret-Caille)
Grégoire Colin as The young man in parka
Gilles D'Ambra as Husband of the tired woman
Micha Lescot as The receptionist
Gianfranco Poddighe as The hotel manager
Nordine Barour as The server
Lionel Goldstein as The buyer
Didier Woldemard as The driver of the van
Nicolas Struve as The man in the collision
Jérôme Pouly as The second man in the collision
Nausicaa Meyer as The woman in the collision
Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 57 reviews, with an average rating of 7.0/10.
The public source identifies “Vendredi soir” as 2002 film by Claire Denis. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Vendredi, soir and film.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3555451. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vendredi soir” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.