Psycho Killer<\/a>,\u201d played over a shot of a bare arm lying in the snow. Snowflakes, barely paler than the exposed skin, fall on it, softly piling on \u2014 and then, suddenly and playfully, the fingers twitch.<\/p>\n\u201cA Private Life\u201d is the story of a psychiatrist, and as such it delves into unexpected places in the mind \u2014 curiously beautiful dream sequences, like that arm. Dr. Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster, in a performance almost entirely in French) is an American in Paris: divorced from her ex-husband Gaby (Daniel Auteuil), distant from her adult son Julien (Vincent Lacoste), keeping herself busy seeing patients and smoking. (This American is very French.) At the film\u2019s start, Lilian learns that one of her patients, Paula (Virginie Efira), has unexpectedly died, and Paula\u2019s doe-eyed daughter Val\u00e9rie (Lu\u00e0na Bajrami) tells Lilian the death was a suicide. But Lilian, in the manner of all noir heroines, begins to wonder whether Paula was murdered and launches an investigation \u2014 accompanied, unexpectedly and delightfully, by Gaby.<\/p>\n
What happens next isn\u2019t as important as how it happens \u2014 how Zlotowski tells a dark story in warm autumn tones (the film\u2019s depiction of Paris in the fall is enchanting); how Foster adds another mesmerizing performance to her long gallery of smart, complicated on-screen women; how somehow, sneakily, Lilian and Gaby\u2019s relationship finds its way from a subplot to the heart of the film. Foster and Auteuil have a charming, playful chemistry; you wonder why these two ever split up, and late in the film, Lilian\u2019s wondering, too, asking him point-blank, \u201cWhy did you leave me?\u201d (His answer, with a sigh: \u201cPass me the cigarette.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u201cA Private Life\u201d is a murder mystery only on its surface; at its heart, it\u2019s an exploration of a lonely woman\u2019s extremely active mind, and an unexpectedly moving story of becoming more present in one\u2019s real life, rather than one\u2019s imaginary one. Foster, her face radiating wary intelligence, invites us into Lilian\u2019s head, letting us see her listening, learning, changing just a bit. I don\u2019t imagine that Zlotowski is planning a multi-movie franchise in which Lilian and Gaby solve crimes, drink wine and share cigarettes. As they might say, quel dommage<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Movie review French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski\u2019s beguiling \u201cA Private Life\u201d signals early that it\u2019s no ordinary noir. The film begins with the malevolent twang of the Talking Heads\u2019 \u201cPsycho Killer,\u201d played over a shot of a bare arm lying in the snow. Snowflakes, barely paler than the exposed skin, fall on it, softly piling on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2256434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2256433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\u2018A-Private-Life-review-Jodie-Foster-mesmerizes-in-French-murder.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2256433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2256435,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256433\/revisions\/2256435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2256434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2256433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2256433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2256433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}