Jodie Foster is Lilian Steiner while Daniel Auteuil stars as her ex-husband Gabriel Haddad in A Private Life.Jérôme Prébois/Supplied
A Private Life
Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski
Written by Rebecca Zlotowski, Anne Berest and Gaëlle Macé
Starring Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil and Mathieu Amalric
Classification PG; 103 minutes
Opens in select theatres Jan. 23
The new film A Private Life is packed with a number of surprises – especially if you have no idea that Jodie Foster is fluent in Parisian French.
The movie might be a surprise to anyone who didn't know Jodie Foster is fluent in French.Jérôme Prébois/Supplied
While that will be old news to anyone who has followed Foster’s career carefully – my first exposure to her seemingly impeccable accent was in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2004 First World War drama A Very Long Engagement – it is still an impressive skill to behold, especially in Rebecca Zlotowski’s film, which requires the actress to shoulder nearly the entire, Paris-set psychological dramedy.
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It is only a shame, then, that A Private Life itself is not as compelling as its star’s bilingual performance.
Foster stars as Lilian, the kind of psychoanalyst who only seems to exist in French films: She has a fabulously appointed Parisian flat, the kinds of cutesy neurotic patients who feel pulled from a three-decade-old Woody Allen film, and a charming rake of an ex-husband (Daniel Auteuil) who is as puzzled over their separation as the audience might be.
To pile on the head-scratching elements, Zlotowski has Lilian fall into an uber-quirky rabbit hole of a mystery involving the death of her patient Paula (Virginie Efira), the possibly manipulative schemes of Paula’s duplicitous husband (Mathieu Amalric, seemingly contractually obliged to play such shifty roles in Parisian cinema), and the revelation that all the shenanigans might be supernatural in nature.
Zlotowski, who is more accustomed to delivering smaller-stake domestic dramas (2022’s Other People’s Children), tries exceptionally hard to ride the line between sophisticated dramedy and zany hijinks, never quite figuring out how to balance it all into something comfortably breezy. Instead, audiences are left to grimace as Lilian makes one head-slapping mistake after another, increasingly distancing herself from anything approaching relatability.
Virginie Efira plays patient Paula Cohen-Solal in the movie alongside Jodie Foster.Jérôme Prébois/Supplied
Foster is, as always, exceptionally compelling to watch as she tries to puzzle out Lilian’s motivations. And the actress is surrounded by France’s finest men of a certain age. Auteuil, Amalric and Vincent Lacoste do their due diligence as performers, even when Zlotowski’s screenplay asks them to abandon all pretenses of rationality.
But the film surrounding the cast frequently gets tangled up in narrative and thematic weeds of its own making. And no amount of linguistic novelty – either North Americans marvelling at Foster’s French, or the French accepting a Hollywood star as one of their own – will save the particular, peculiar, perhaps best left private life of Lilian.