It’s so ordinary nowadays for crime stories to have an absolutely terrific setup leading to a whimper of an ending, so when one plays its cards as well as A Private Life does it should be praised from the rooftops. In the last twenty or so years Jodie Foster has acted less and directed more, though the Academy Award nomination she received for her work in Nyad seems to have spurred her back to acting again. She has always been one of our spikiest, smartest actresses and now has pushed her talents further to play an American who has chosen to make her life in France. This is not the first time Ms. Foster has acted in French (that was in A Very Long Engagement back in 2004) but it is her first lead role, and she inhabits the language with ease. You really get the sense that she is a Parisian, with her tasteful apartment, an adult son named Julien (Vincent Lacoste) who has recently become a father himself, and an optometrist ex-husband named Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil). But Lilian’s work is the most important thing in her life, and A Private Life is about what happens with the personal and professional collide. It’s much more than the sum of its parts, and a lot of fun to boot.
Lilian (Ms. Foster) is a psychiatrist who sees patients in a suite in her own apartment – normal in France – and who tapes all her sessions to enable her to better analyse her clients. One of her long-term patients, Paula (Virginie Efira), dies suddenly, and Lilian is distraught. She attempts to attend the funeral but Paula’s widower Simon (Mathieu Amalric having a wonderful time) throws her out, and later their daughter Valerie (Luana Bajrami) stops by to inform Lilian that her mother’s death was not an accident but suicide. Lilian takes this news very hard. In all the years of her work with Paula she had never gotten the sense that she was suicidal. So Lilian revisits the tapes of Paula’s old sessions (shown in flashback) and becomes convinced that Paula was actually murdered by Simon. And while Lilian tells this to anybody who will listen and many people who won’t, the only person who takes her even half seriously is Gabriel. So there’s nothing for it but the two of them to go investigating together, which is always a terrific idea, prowling around Paris and its suburbs chasing a maybe murderer with your ex. There’s even a small cameo for director Frederick Wiseman as Lilian’s own therapist, who provides some excellent advice Lilian ignores completely.
Director Rebecca Zlotowski, who co-wrote the script with Gaëlle Macé and Anne Berest, manages to build a sense of complicated layered lives that palpably extend beyond this chapter. The rapport between Lilian and her various patients swings between caring and menacing. One who has started smoking again is suing Lilian for the amount he’s paid her over the years, because clearly therapy hasn’t worked, but the little scene where Lilian sighs and offers him a light is unbearably kind. Valerie, who wore a red coat to her mother’s funeral, starts showing up in Lilian’s life in inappropriate places, and while she’s clearly just an upset kid and repeatedly says she only wants to talk then what is she doing hovering around? It becomes very clear there’s more to Simon than Lilian ever realised, but why can’t Lilian stop herself from showing up inappropriately in Simon’s life? And why won’t Lilian hold her new grandchild?
Mr. Auteuil really is a matchless movie star. It’s hard to say exactly what he does other than have a gift for listening, but whenever he’s on screen he eats all the attention. Just look at how he throws the hair straighteners into the back of the car. Everything he does is completely mesmerising. The scene between him and Mr. Amalric, in which Mr. Amalric goes full frontal, is both extremely funny and very nerve-wracking. Meddling in other people’s lives is a huge risk and Ms. Foster does a fine line as someone who busily excuses her own behaviour while knowing perfectly well what a hypocrite she’s being. She knows both how to keep herself coiled tight and also how to let herself explode for reasons she can’t quite explain. In both areas she seems somehow lit from within, and this role is a great showcase for both her cleverness and her sense of humor about how the world works. It’s also an extremely French movie, in that the interactions Julien has with both his parents are those of three adults who are all on equal footing, which is a level of emotional intelligence and personal responsibility American’s don’t often achieve.
The costume and production design keep Lilian largely in brown clothes and surrounded by brown things with the occasional bolt of blue to match her eyes, which has the eerie effect of emphasising Lilian’s intelligence while we watch her think about things. The scenes where she argues with a hypnotist (Sophie Guillemin) are a perfect distillation of the different ways people make choices. There are rational one and instinctive ones, and Lilian has always thought of herself as someone who was flawlessly rational. This is the story of how she realises she is wrong. And the great fun of A Private Life is that all of the mysteries investigated here come to a very satisfying conclusion.
A Private Life (Vie Privée) recently played at the London Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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