Jodie Foster plays a Paris psychiatrist drawn into mystery in A Private Life

Jodie Foster stars as Lilian Steiner, an American psychiatrist in Paris who becomes embroiled in unexpected intrigue after the death of a patient in Rebecca Zlotowski’s film A Private Life, according to a review in The New York Times.

The review notes that Foster speaks French in the film (but curses in English) and portrays a woman who has lived in France long enough to have married there, had a son, divorced and become a grandmother. Virginie Efira appears as the dead patient, Paula, who surfaces in fragmented flashbacks; Paula’s death is described as “perhaps by suicide,” and Lilian tells her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil) that she suspects foul play. Mathieu Amalric’s character, Simon, berates Lilian at the shiva, and the screenplay is credited to Zlotowski and Anne Berest.

Manohla Dargis writes that the movie uses ocular details and vertigo-inducing staircases and leans into tonal shifts that mix psychological thriller touches and playful winks as Lilian turns amateur detective. The review calls the intrigue far-fetched and surprising, and notes the film is rated R for a plot thread involving suicide and some English-language profanity; it runs 1 hour 43 minutes, is in French with subtitles, and is in theaters.

Key Topics

Culture, Jodie Foster, A Private Life, Paris, Rebecca Zlotowski, Virginie Efira