Jodie Foster anchors Rebecca Zlotowski’s uneven murder mystery

Collider's Ross Bonaime says Jodie Foster elevates Rebecca Zlotowski's A Private Life, a strange, unwieldy murder mystery in which she plays psychiatrist Lilian Steiner.

In the film Lilian, a therapist who is described as a poor listener, is shaken when a patient, Paula (Virginie Efira), appears to have died after taking medication prescribed by Lilian; she refuses to accept it as suicide and investigates whether Paula was murdered, looking at the husband Simon (Mathieu Almaric) and daughter Valérie (Luàna Bajram) and enlisting her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil). Bonaime highlights a puzzling hypnotherapy sequence — an opera-house vision involving Nazis — as emblematic of the film's many ambiguous turns, and says the screenplay repeatedly pursues dead ends while the editing propels the story in disparate directions.

Bonaime praises Foster's performance — noting this is her first non-ensemble lead role since 2007's The Brave One and her first mostly French role since 2004's A Very Long Engagement — and also commends Rebecca Zlotowski's direction and Georges Lechaptois's cinematography, even as the reviewer finds the central mystery unsatisfying. A Private Life is now in theaters; the review lists a release date of November 26, 2025, a 100-minute runtime, Rebecca Zlotowski as director and writers Gaëlle Macé, Anne Berest and Rebecca Zlotowski.

Key Topics

Culture, Jodie Foster, Rebecca Zlotowski, A Private Life, Lilian Steiner, Georges Lechaptois