A Private Life (now on Netflix) is a bit of an odd one, a French-language Jodie Foster vehicle and murder mystery that I’m not sure should be taken too seriously. First, who knew Foster was fluent in French? And second, writer/director Rebecca Zlotowski strikes an unusual tone, casting the Oscar winner as a psychiatrist snooping around the potentially suspicious death of a patient, and acting increasingly, well, loopy while doing it. It’s sort of a psychodrama and sort of a dark comedy and maybe mulling it over here will provide some clarity.
The Gist: We open with the strains of the Talking Heads’s “Psycho Killer” playing, and considering the source — anyone ever attempt the impossible by trying to pigeonhole David Byrne? — that’s where “not sure it should be taken too seriously” comes from. Lilian Styner (Foster) immediately strikes us as a no-nonsense straight-talker who doesn’t tolerate fools, and perhaps it’s funny to watch her gradually slip out of that uptight persona as the movie progresses? It’s at least somewhat fascinating. She’s a psychiatrist, calling a patient, Paula (Virginie Efira in flashbacks and a sequence of hypnotic regression — more on that later!), who’s now missed three sessions, and leaving a voicemail reminder that she still has to pay for those sessions. Moments later, Paula’s daughter Valerie (Luana Bajrami) returns the call: Paula died suddenly. Valerie invites Lilian to a wake in their home. Lilian attends, and Paula’s husband Simon (Mathieu Amalric) lashes out at her. He blames Lilian for this tragedy. Paula took her own life.
All this occurs right after one of Paula’s other patients, Pierre (Noam Morgensztern), drops her as his doctor. He wanted psychotherapy so he could quit smoking, and eight years later, he’s still paying her and still smoking. So he went to a hypnotist and it took one appointment for him to drop the habit. He threatens to sue. Rough day in Dr. Styner’s office. And then she starts crying uncontrollably, sort of. She doesn’t express much emotion, but the tears just stream out of her eyes. She visits her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), an ophthalmologist, for an inconclusive exam. Her next stop is to visit their son, Julien (Vincent Lacoste), so we can wonder why their relationship is so strained, possibly having to do with her apparent reluctance to spend time with her two-month-old grandson — or more than that. Most likely more than that. (Note, Julien points out that he’s never seen her cry before.) And being something of a stuck-in-the-’90s luddite, Lilian has Julien order her minidiscs — remember minidiscs? — so she can record her sessions. She’s been using them forever and doesn’t want to change. Apps, schmapps, I guess.
With the character stuff established, the untimely-death plot gets a chance to thick. Valerie stops by Lilian’s office and gives her a piece of paper, a prescription for medication Lilian prescribed to help with Paula’s insomnia. The poor woman seems to have overdosed, hence Simon’s outburst. Paula scribbled something on it that’s harder to read than Lilian’s classic Doctor Handwriting and it looks like the dosage was altered. Curious. Lilian’s first move in peeling back some of the layers of this mystery is to visit Pierre’s wacky hypnotherapist, which prompts Lilian to envision a “past life” in which she and Paula were lovers, musicians in an orchestra conducted by a pistol-wielding Simon, during World War II, and Julien is cast as a Nazi. EXTRA curious! From here, Lilian’s loopy behavior begins, her eyes getting conspiratorially wide in some situations, possibly fallout from the hypnotic regression. Or maybe it’s just the wine? She gets help unraveling the mystery from Gabriel, and it’s increasingly obvious that they’re still in love, which makes him sympathetic to her somewhat unhinged impulses — and complicit in the light lawbreaking excursions she leads him on.
Photo: Everett Collection
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? A Private Life takes something relatively lightweight from the Hitchcock oeuvre — say, The Trouble with Harry — and crosses it with Murder She Wrote.
Performance Worth Watching: Seeing Foster play the prickliest version of Angela Lansbury, and say, “I’m not crying, it’s my eyes” when tears routinely streak down her face? I am amused.
Sex And Skin: A long shot of lady toplessness, male bottomlessness and subsequent sex-having.
Photo: Everett Collection
Our Take: Call A Private Life a gently uncozy mystery with most of the cozy trappings: an untimely death, more comedy than you might expect for a story about untimely death, and a leading cast Of A Certain Age. The film departs from that formula by rendering the Foster character a reluctant amateur sleuth, and not the warmest human being. It’s essentially the story of someone whose rigid, tight-lipped demeanor erodes, with a sly sense of humor, with the manipulative truisms levied at her by a hypnotherapist, e.g., “Your irony is an expression of your fear,” and “Don’t confuse skepticism for intelligence.”
Somewhat frustrating, though, is how the hard-scientist-falls-prey-to-pseudoscientific-woo-woo arc isn’t the film’s primary focus. Wisely, Zlotowski doesn’t side with skeptics or believers; less wisely, her script doesn’t consistently chart Lilian’s progress as a human being. In fact, I’m not sure it has a primary focus outside of Foster’s performance, which ranges from terrifically flinty to mildly deranged, and is very much a classic case of an old pro elevating a screenplay that isn’t sure if it has anything to say about love, death, the corporeal or the ethereal.
The film is essentially a character study uncomfortably wedged into an idiosyncratic murder mystery, with Foster relishing opportunities to deliver the kind of French-tickler comic moments that sneak up on and surprise you. Lilian seems generally detached at the beginning of the film and mostly accidentally becomes a more empathetic human being and therapist as she investigates the death — via a little light B&E and stalking — showing some uncharacteristically erratic behavior along the way. The star makes many individual moments work, even if the big picture doesn’t fully come together.
Our Call: Foster? Still has it. Not that we ever doubted her. STREAM IT, if only to see her work.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
