JODIE FOSTER IN A PRIVATE LIFE

Shrink sleuth

Jodie Foster, who has had French-speaking roles in French films before - having been bilingual more or less starting with attending a French school in L.A. - gets to play the lead in a French film this time, her biggest yet and her first French role in over twenty years, Rebecca Zlotkowski's Vie privée (A Private Life). She plays Lilian Steiner, an American-born/Parisian by adoption psychiatrist who turns private investigator when she thinks a patient's death was not by her own hand as is being claimed. This is a suave, elegant film in its way, and Jodie does perform admirably, entirely in French (though allowing herself the occasional private "Shit!" 'asshole!" or even "Damn French!") . The film is mildly entertaining with its comedy and hints of Hitchcock, De Palma or something more modern and perhaps TV; but the main reason to watch and enjoy is the star for her natural charisma, plus the bonus of seeing her carry a whole film in French.

Zlotkowski has loaded the deck a bit, not taking any chances, by casting some of the best known actors in French films. The excellent comic and dramatic actress Virginie Efira plays the victim, who appears in flashback. Omnipresent younger actor Vincent Lacoste plays Julien Haddad-Park, Lilian's semi-estranged adult son. His role involves being a point of family tension, with his mother often avoiding him and his newborn grandson, while he encourages her to use more modern methods for her work, highlighting their generational and technological differences. Daniel Auteuil plays Gabriel Haddad, the affectionate ex-husband of Lilian, a role where he's a doctor involved in her strange investigations, representing a past love interest and source of support. He is a bland figure. More dramatic is the ubiquitous Mathieu Amalric as Simon Cohen-Solal, husband of the dead patient, who aggressively expels Lilian from the shiva (wake) for her patient, claiming, it emerges later, that she is responsible because it was meds she prescribed that were the proximate cause of death. This behavior leads to suspicion on Lilian's part.

But those aren't the only names. An actor of the Comédie Française plays the key minor role of the unstable patient Pierre, important cameos are consigned to two legends, Frederick Wiseman and Aurore Clément, and there is also Irène Jacob.

While the shrink plays sleuth, the film is most of all investigating the shrink - and how she is plagued with self doubt ("What do I cure?) and also by aggressive patients, like Pierre Hallan (Noam Morgensztern), who finds a hypnotist helps him to stop smokihg and ends years of treatment, then decides to sue Lilian for the 40,000 euros he has paid in fees for his sessions with her.

Jewishness plays an underlying role in the film. Freud was Jewish, and Lilian is apparently both Jewish and a Freudian. The dead patient was Jewish, as is her husband. The film alludes to the current rise of antisemitism in Europe, with swastikas appearing in the film, aiming to prompt reflection on ignorance and the persistence of hate. There is a somewhat 40's-style surreal dream sequence experienced by Lilian under hypnosis that references the Holocaust, where Lilian imagines herself as a musician during the Nazi occupation of Paris, learning that in another life she was in love with another key character. Zlotkowski has said A Private Life can be watched as "a "culturally Jewish-oriented film about what's happening in Europe." Lilian has been abandoned by a patient in favor of the hypnotist, and there are hints of unfavorable comparisons between laborious and expensive psychotherapy vs. more efficient hypnosis.

And yet the last scenes of this film are full of reconciliation and healing, as well as understanding of what has happened and Lilian's moving to a greater level of warmth and confidence and readiness to change. A Private Life loses its way a bit in the middle and may lose us, but its final moments are satisfying, redemptive even, in ways one wishes conventional mystery stories could be.

I've reviewed most of Zlotkowski's previous features, from her 2010 La Fémis graduation project debut Belle Épine (the first time I may have really noticed Léa Seydoux) through Grand Central, An Easy Girl and the 2022 Other People's Children. I haven't seen her 2016 Planetarum, which, while the least well received by critics, has elements of the supernatural and WWII references in common with Vie privée.

With its clues, hints, and semi-comic thriller elements, A Private Life seems more self-consciously a "movie" than most of those earlier efforts, which may make it more superficial but also more fun. It seems to have been a mutually beneficial choice to bring Jodie Foster into a lead role in a French film, and Foster has said she plans to do more of them.

A Private Life/Vie privée, 103 mins., premiered in the out of competition section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2025. It was theatrically in France Nov. 26 and was well received critically (AlloCiné 3.6 or 72%). It received César and Lumière award nominations including Best Actress for Foster. A Private Life opened theatrically in the US Jan. 16, 2026, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. In Bay Area theaters Jan. 30.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.