A Private Life
Rebecca Zlotowski directs another complex investigation into a guarded female character, with an impeccable Jodie Foster as a bad psychiatrist-turned-detective
A Private Life follows Dr Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster), a Jewish-American psychiatrist living in Paris. Her office, complete with earth-tone cushions and appealing design objects, is the soulless theatre where she has mastered the art of selective listening. The clients pouring their hearts out on Lilian’s chaise longue are but background noise, their life stories compressed into the obsolete MiniDiscs that she stubbornly arranges for her records. The shrink’s aloofness crumbles when one of her patients, Paula (Virginie Efira), dies by suicide. In an uncharacteristic bout of compassion, Lilian suspects foul play and ropes her ex-husband (Daniel Auteuil) into solving the puzzle.
Director Zlotowski, with co-writers Anne Berest and Gaëlle Macé, crafts a maybe-whodunnit that’s as much of a self-examination for a repressed protagonist. The movie's twists and turns are diverting, but its potpourri of genres bears none of the bittersweetness that imbued Zlotowski's excellent Other People’s Children, also starring Efira. A lesser, if compelling, companion to that 2022 drama, A Private Life balances Lilian’s cynicism with levity and playfulness courtesy of the chemistry between Foster and Auteuil and some fine psychiatry humour.
It’s a lot to juggle — the film could’ve done without some of its more outlandish elements — but Foster spins the plates with such poise that you’ll want to go along on her character's journey. A terrible listener who’s forced to reopen the archives of her life, Lilian learns to lend an ear to her own desires and those of others in this subtle, sophisticated study of empathy and healing.
Released 26 Jun by Altitude; certificate 15