Vendredi ou un autre jour (2005) - film review

In 1759, the celebrated actor Philippe De Nohan sets sail on La Virginie with a French theatre troupe to make a tour of the New World.  During the crossing, the boat sinks, but, by a miracle, Philippe survives.  When he comes to, he finds himself on the beach of a desert island.  After several hours of frantic searching, he realises that he is the sole survivor, the only inhabitant of this natural prison.  How can he go on living, in this one-man universe with no one to entertain...?

The terrifying prospect of waking up one day to discover that you are alone and must spend the rest of your life in your own company is brought home with a vengeance in this haunting yet strangely beautiful film by French director Yvan Le Moine.  Based on Michel Tournier’s award winning 1967 novel Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique (which offers a typically Gallic existential reinterpretation of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe), the film is not so much a drama as a stark visual poem that takes us to a dark and savage corner of reality in which a man who was once adulated as an actor undergoes a slow and painful transformation into a thing of abject solitude.  Even when this desolate soul does finally encounter another human being, the friendly native whom he christens Friday, his metamorphosis continues, in the opposite sense to Friday’s, as though the society of men no longer matters to him after he has accustomed himself to the barren wilderness of a remote island that now reflects his inner temperament.

In what is possibly the most challenging role of his career, Philippe Nahon gives an arresting and nuanced performance that is so convincing that watching his character’s gradual decline into primitive isolation is quite a harrowing and revelatory experience.  The bleak island setting, austerely photographed with a limited earthy palette that is starkly evocative of African art and imbues the film with an oppressive dreamlike feel, accentuates the impression of the psychological and physical trauma that Nahon is subjected to as he is slowly divested of his robes of civilisation and emerges as the naked savage which lies at the heart of each one of us.  When Nahon is once again reunited with humanity at the end of the film, we immediately identify with his sense of revulsion at what so-called civilised man represents, and so it is not with sadness that we leave him alone in his wild island paradise but rather with a greater awareness of the liberating power of enforced solitude and the sublime resilience of the human spirit. 

Vendredi ou un autre jour is not an easy film to watch - its occasional longueurs, slow pace and rigorously austere style present something of a challenge for even the most ardent of serious film enthusiasts.  However, for those who can stay the course and follow Philippe De Nahon on his private journey into Hell, this most idiosyncratic and haunting of films provides a sombre meditation on the mystery of existence that will leave a lasting impression and may even alter the way you look at the world.  Isn’t Nahon’s inward odyssey one that we are all compelled to undertake in our life time - a gradual waking up to the fact that we are all, as individuals, quite utterly alone and must somehow grow to live with this fact in order to attain our fullest spiritual development, whether Fate plants us on a desert island or at the heart of a throbbing metropolis?

© James Travers 2011

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