Claire Denis: That Friday night feeling

Claire Denis finds filming intensely erotic, she tells Fiona Morrow. So it's not surprising that her new film, Vendredi Soir, is a rather sexy affair

Claire Denis is late. Very late. The PR schedule is shot to bits, and there is an increasingly untidy mess of journalists from around the world camping out in the smart Parisian hotel corridor. But despite the inconvenience, no one seems much bothered, or too surprised: Denis is one of those people you expect to wait for.

Eventually, a small, wiry woman, with a scruff of red curls defiantly doing their own thing, saunters along. She's dressed in black combat trousers, big boots and a leather jacket, and she's smoking like she means business. The outer toughness belies the sensitivity of her work: Denis has created a cinema of emotion, of expectation, an assault on the senses. She eschews dialogue for feelings, focusing in on the tiniest gesture; the results are often deeply erotic. Her scandalously little-seen filmography includes Chocolat, Nénette et Boni, S'en Fout la Mort (No Fear, No Die), Trouble Every Day and - the masterpiece - Beau Travail.

The latter starred Denis Lavant in a loose adaptation of Herman Melville's Billy Budd, and was a breathtaking vision of male ritual and sexuality, frustration, disappointment and brutality. It was acclaimed from all quarters and Denis, always high on the radar of critics and arthouse cineastes, appeared to be on the cusp of wider recognition.

Then her follow-up, Trouble Every Day, a modern vampire tale starring Vincent Gallo and Béatrice Dalle, was greeted with (unfair) derision when it premiered at Cannes, and later opened to largely negative reviews. But all Denis had done was continue as before, making films she felt compelled to create.

She gives a bemused shrug when I ask if she had felt any pressure to match Beau Travail's success. "No, it was not any pressure, because I didn't realise it was there," she answers with a voice deep and cracked, seductively scarred by her ferocious chain-smoking.

"It was such a hard film," she sighs. "It took me a long time to be able to take those 15 men to Djibuti on a small budget. It was a bet on almost nothing that we would make the film at all; all the omens were against us. But, in the end, it went well, and when the film was finished, it was finished. The praise was..." she pauses, shakes her head and offers a smirk, "of course it's good, but by then I had almost forgotten why the film could be praised."

Such insouciance is expected. After all, this is a woman who spent years refusing to direct because she believed it would be unbearably immodest. The young Denis may have been principled, but she took a few wrong turns: "I studied economics. It was completely suicidal. Everything pissed me off."

Then she decided that London was the place to be - she fancied Eric Burdon of The Animals - and studied Far Eastern languages. Then she married a photographer and helped him out, until he told her that she needed to decide what she wanted to do for herself.

Finally, she did. After film school, she jumped at the chance to work for Jacques Rivette, then crossed the US with Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas. "Everything was absolutely connected, and deep down that's what I was looking for. To also have the time to drive, drive, drive, while listening to music, and dreaming up the screenplay which was being modified day by day by calling Sam Shepard. It was something indescribable for a little French girl."

Twenty years later, Denis is back on the road. Her latest film, Vendredi Soir, takes place on a rainy night in a Paris gridlocked by a public transport strike. Laure (Valérie Lemercier) has just finished clearing out her flat, ready to move in with her boyfriend the following day. She sets off to have dinner with friends, only to find herself stuck in the traffic jam. That may sound like the opening five minutes of a movie, but in Denis's hands, it runs closer to an hour. The jam is a metaphor for Laure's apprehension: she's worried about giving up her freedom, entering domesticity, leaving behind part of herself. She decides to give a man - a stranger - a lift.

It's not the kind of action women are encouraged to make, I suggest, and Denis leans forwards. "I think that's why it's so important," she nods. " All that locking the room, locking the car - she's afraid of leaving the door ajar..." Denis reaches for her lighter and flips up the top with a satisfying thunk. "I understand why, and I'm not judging her," she continues. "But I think it's only when you open the door that something might happen." Something does: the couple skirt around a mutual attraction before finally taking the plunge and checking into a hotel.

Vendredi Soir is based on the novel by Emmanuèle Bernheim, with whom Denis collaborated on the script. As you might expect, conversation is spare. "The novel..." says Denis, frowning: "I never realised it was so poor in dialogue. There was a sort of point of view that was Laure's, and a base of a voiceover, which we did write." It didn't last long. "I thought it was very bad, it was killing the film. The voiceover would lead the audience by the hand, and they will not be in Laure's head. So I told Emmanuèle and she agreed completely. We decided to have faith in cinema."

The final third of the film is the consummation of the lengthy, tentative foreplay. "We shot the sex over a week, probably," says Denis. "I had not worked with either actor, so we were all shy." But she used this to her advantage. "Such shyness is very interesting, especially in this film, because Laure and Jean (Vincent Lindon) don't know each other; it's about discovering the unknown." Denis films the intimacy very close up: having been in Laure's head for the first part of the film, suddenly we're under her skin. "For us, each time she would caress his face was as important as being naked," proffers Denis. "She didn't dare to touch him first, and we could really feel it on the set."

And this, Denis acknowledges, is what drives her to keep shooting. "There is a very erotic process in making films," she purrs. "It's one of the energies you have to deal with, because it's there. This relationship of filming people is so erotic to me, that if the strong desire was not there, I would think I was not ready to make the film." She shakes her head: "Lack of money, being unhappy with locations - things like that you can cope with, but it seems to me you're wasting your time if you're not completely into that erotic attraction."

'Vendredi Soir' opens on 22 August