A Private Life

Released 2025. Director: Rebecca Zlotowski

A PSYCHIATRIST COMPLAINS THAT SHE CAN'T HEAR her client because the music from the apartment across the hall is distracting her attention. The thing to note in this scene is there's no patient present and the music isn't overly loud. The psychiatrist simply wants everything to be perfect, exactly the way she wants it. The point about hearing is pertinent and will have a major bearing on the rest of the story.

Jodie Foster plays the psychiatrist, an American named Lilian Steiner living in Paris. She is fastidiously organised in her file management. Every session is recorded on MiniDisc and catalogued neatly for future reference. Perhaps this seemingly failsafe system is a subconscious remedy because the psychiatrist, as it turns out, isn't always paying full attention to her patients as they lay on the couch spilling their innermost thoughts. Lilian, as you'll come to realise, isn't at all an empathetic listener.

A Private Life has an alternative title called Paris Murder Mystery, which aptly describes the movie. When Paula, one of Lilian's clients, is found overdosed from an apparent suicide, Lilian suspects foul play and feels compelled to dig deeper. Her prime suspects are Paula's husband Simon and daughter Valerie, who Lilian suspects had tempered with her prescriptions. Enlisting the help of her ex-husband Gabriel, Lilian couldn't help herself from unofficial sleuthing, often based on nothing but a hunch and unsubstantiated theories.

Someone is clearly hiding something and trying to intimidate Lilian. She gets silent phone calls and her car is vandalised. When her apartment is burgled, the only thing taken is the recording of Paula's final session. Now if only Lilian could recall what her patient had said.

But Lilian wouldn't give up and her investigative efforts have a comical undertone that's incompatible with the movie's dramatic focus. She obsesses over her suspicion, stalks Simon to the country where he appears to have a mistress, even rummages in rubbish bins for clues and steals an Amazon delivery, only to find nothing of value to substantiate her theory that Simon killed Paula for her inheritance from a wealthy aunt.

Adding a different layer to the murder mystery is Lilian's foray into hypnosis. Putting her scepticism on pause, Lilian's regressions conjure visions of a past life where she sees Paula, Simon and herself as members of an orchestra. One of them has a loaded gun. But what does it mean?

To her credit the amateur detective ends up finding her answer. For the audience, however, the resolution offers little sense of revelation or satisfaction as the endeavour resembles more of a wild-goose chase. If Lilian had only been a better listener, things might have turned out differently. And that I think is the message here, about people not being conscientious of others. You know, when someone is physically here, but their heart and mind is somewhere else. The movie underscores this point with a subplot about Lilian's son Julien, who resents his mother for being absent and being an emotionally distant granny to her infant grandson.

Jodie Foster, who speaks fluent French, holds the movie's disparate elements together with her considerable screen command. Usually playing strong women with a firm hand to keep any situation under control, Foster is believable here as an intelligent psychiatrist whose rational mind is losing its sharp edge as she stumbles for a foothold. Daniel Auteuil, as Gabriel; and Mathieu Amalric, as Simon, also shine in their supporting roles, along with Virginie Efira as Paula and Vincent Lacoste as Julien.

The story doesn't play like a conventional murder mystery, which is a detriment to itself because It'd have been more enjoyable. Written and directed with the tone of a quiet drama with a hint of insight into human follies, Lilian's search for the truth is at times silly and incongruent. The detour into a supernatural past-life connection is a trickery and the various red herrings all amount to a rather scrambled plot. As a psychological drama about family and emotional bonds, the final outcome is slight and it's only redeemed by its fine cast.

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