A Private Life

Jodie Foster’s newest role as an American in Paris is not the chic or splendorous tale that so often accompanies that trope. Rather, in Rebecca Zlotowski’s “A Private Life,” Lillian (Foster) is a stiff psychiatrist who, after learning about the suicide of one of her patients, Paula (Virginie Efira), becomes convinced she was actually murdered. Lillian then becomes deeply entwined in the details of Paula’s life, following leads ranging from pure suspicion to hypnosis to uncover the truth. At first challenged by the fact that she potentially overlooked the warning signs that could lead to a patient taking their own life, Lillian hardly has any time to reflect before another patient, Pierre (Noam Morgensztern) is practically knocking her door down. He’s furious, claiming that after years of therapy and tens of thousands of dollars, it was not her who kicked his smoking habit, but a one-time appointment with a hypnotist. She also has a fraught relationship with her son, Julien (Vincent Lacoste), and suddenly, despite never being quick to emote, she can’t stop crying. Lillian is losing grip of her own stable stoicism, and it’s throwing her for a loop. Her faith in her ability to do the job that defines her is faltering, and her journey to prove herself wrong masquerades as the film’s murder mystery. This flimsy confidence shows in her investigative pursuits, as she hops and skips between theories, pursuing them wholeheartedly, but never considering that she might have missed something. Enlisting the help of her ex-husband, Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), the fractures in Lillian’s personal world come even further to light, coloring what may simply be one woman’s hunt for a purpose. She even sees Pierre’s hypnotist, who takes her across numerous psychic landscapes, from being in utero to a past life as a cellist (and Paula’s former lover), eventually curing her of her crying fits, but perhaps inflicting her with new excuses, as she begins to use her own hypnosis as fodder for her theories. Yet simultaneously, a staunch skeptic of the process itself, she finds her mind changed, prompting her to question her beliefs about her own practice.