With her beguiling new film, Friday Night, French filmmaker Claire Denis may have made her version of Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love - but her film is less melancholic and more in the moment. After the poor reception of her last picture, the brooding romantic thriller-cum-cannibal-fest Trouble Every Day, it may appear that Denis is returning to safer, simpler ground with a light, romantic story. But, as with all of her work, there's more going on than meets the eye in Friday Night, and, as always, it's not plot alone. It's the feel, the mood, the music, the hauntingly photographed images that draw you in - but it's the playfulness at work that really enchants.
Denis is probably still best known for her first film, Chocolat, a semi-autobiographical story of a girl growing up in Africa, or, as she puts it herself, "a collection of memories." The film was made after Denis spent some time assisting other visually masterful filmmakers both in Europe and America before launching a career about as diverse and varied as theirs have been.
In the opening scene of Friday Night, a five-minute wordless montage set to the music of Benjamin Britten, the sun sets and the lights of the City of Light slowly rise, and apartment buildings, fences, streets, all merge together in an otherworldly way that draws the audience in to a new way of looking at an urban environment. I couldn't help but think of this sequence while Denis, who was in San Francisco recently for the International Film Festival premiere of Friday Night, was gazing out the window of the Fairmont Hotel penthouse suite she'd been happily ensconced in. The city below and around, distant, buzzing, taken for granted - similar, in other words, to the films of Claire Denis.
Valérie Lemercier in Friday Night
You spent much of your childhood in West Africa. Were you able to see films there as a child?
No. So I had to discover storytelling more by reading. I learned how to read and write from my mother there, in Africa. The closest I'd get to seeing movies is when she would describe for me the films she remembered seeing. In that sense, she was telling me stories based on films. Years later I was amazed to discover that she had described Hiroshima Mon Amour in such a way that, when I finally saw it, I already knew it so well.
You started your career working with such unique talents as Dusan Makavejev, Costa-Gavras, Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders -
That was actually the end of my career. [laughs] No, when I stopped working with Wim, I was already trying to do my first movie. It was a new thing, not just working with Wim, but traveling with him. It was like taking a rest before I jumped into my own work, experiencing the company of someone you like and who gives you more than just a job but also a vision of his own. And he was someone I could speak with about music. Through him I met [musician/actor] John Lurie, and through Lurie I met Jarmusch. When Jim asked me to work with him, I thought it was a joke, because at the time I was off doing location scouting in Cameroon for Chocolat. But Jim was serious. So I flew halfway across the world from Cameroon to New Orleans to work on Down By Law. And there, when I was his AD, he gave me a rabbit's foot that I kept. I think I did my first film with that rabbit's foot in my pocket the whole time. And then I lost it when I was in Cannes, and thought, uh-oh, the good luck charm is gone. Maybe I didn't need it, who knows.
Do you ever hear their voices in your head when you're shooting?
Oh no, I do it my own way. What Jim and Wim do is so special, and what is good for them is only good for them. You have to find your own voice, otherwise it's not special. I'm not Joan of Arc, you know, I don't hear voices. [laughs] I would love to have voices when I set up a shot, but I only have my intuition. Sometimes I have something better than voice - I have music that someone has composed for me.
Music plays a really big part in a lot of your films. I still think of Abdullah Obrahim's wonderful score for Chocolat or No Fear, No Die, for instance, or the Tindersticks in Trouble Every Day. Do you envision particular pieces of music, songs, while writing and plotting out the film?
Yes and no. I mean, we discuss music before shooting so I know more or less what I have by the time I have playback.
So you knew when you were adapting the book Friday Night that you were going to use Shostakovich during a certain scene?
Not really...
Did that evolve in editing?
Not in editing. I was working with Dickon [Hinchliffe] who did the score for Friday Night [and Nénette et Boni] and who composes the Tindersticks music. We decided on no additional songs, that the songs you hear on the radio in the film are enough. And the only thing I knew was that I was using Benjamin Britten for the opening shots, on the roof. So Dickon and I heard that and I made a selection of music I felt would be good for the traffic jam sequence and to match the parts where [Laure, Valerie Lemercier's character] feels afraid - and some of that was Shostakovich and Britten. But I was not sure it would work. So we started first with Britten. It's something I did try during editing, but was selected before. But the important thing was I wanted to feel the fear myself.
Vincent Lindon in Friday Night
Shostakovich, of course, reminds one of Bernard Herrmann, the favorite composer of Alfred Hitchcock, who's frequently referenced in the book.
Well, of course, Herrmann copied Shostakovich.
Right.
But I did want that violin-ish music in the film. Shostakovich, in a way, invented film music because he invented a form that was very narrative. Britten also. Bernard Herrmann stole stuff from Britten, too, but they were at least friends and they would exchange things. Shostakovich worked in both films and serious music, maybe Herrmann was envious of that.
You also used Britten in Beau Travail - which was very appropriate since Britten had written an opera based on Billy Budd. How did adapting Friday Night compare with adapting Herman Melville's Billy Budd into Beau Travail? Or do you consider that an adaptation?
No, I never felt I was adapting Billy Budd when I did Beau Travail. I was inspired by [master-of-arms] Claggart's character. He's really the character I liked in that book; I'm otherwise not very keen on Billy Budd. For me, Claggart's the real person in that story. The one thing I took literally from the book Billy Budd is from the opening, when they're walking down the street at dawn carrying soldiers. But it came more from that Melville poem called "The Night March." With the lost army wandering because they have lost their chief. That was something that also inspired it.
But Friday Night I really adapted with the writer, and it was very easy, because I respect the book completely. Actually, what was difficult was to be that respectful to a book - because no one would believe that I would be. Everyone thought I was going to be inspired to do a Brief Encounter story. And even [writer] Emmanuele Bernheim was amazed that I was adapting the book literally.
She thought you would use the material as a point to develop something else?
Yeah, or at least my producer did. She thought I would add flashbacks and so on. Emmanuele knew me and was part of the adaptation, so she wasn't as surprised. But she kept telling me, "Be free!" I said, "I am free." But I also thought the book was sort of strange in that it consists of mostly short sentences and little details accentuated. And it all takes place in [Laure's] mind. So I thought, if there is something interesting in that book, it is to adapt it just like that. Not differently. Because otherwise it actually is going to be less interesting.
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