Rebecca Zlotowski, “Vie Privée” (“A Private Life”) (2026)
Billed as a crime / mystery thriller, this film is best seen as a psychological character study revolving around a female medical professional forced to take stock of her career and life by crises affecting two of her patients. Psychoanalyst Dr Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster), an American expat who has made her home and career in Paris, is accosted by former patient Pierre who ends his sessions with her, claiming that a hypnotist has cured him of his smoking addiction (which years of psychoanalytic therapy failed to do) in one session. Pierre warns Lilian that he will sue her for financial damages. While Lilian is reeling from this news, she gets a call from Valerie (Luàna Bajrami), the daughter of another of Lilian’s patients (Paula Cohen-Solal), who tells her that Paula (Virginie Efira) has died and invites her to attend Paula’s wake. Lilian turns up to the wake (a Jewish shemira) but is told to leave by Paula’s widowed husband Simon (Mathieu Amalric).
After being treated to seeing aspects of Lilian’s private life – she visits her son Julien (Vincente Lacoste) and his new baby, catches up with her ophthalmologist ex-husband Gaby (Daniel Auteuil) and even visits Pierre’s hypnotist for a session, during which Lilian apparently visits a past life in Nazi Germany in which she and Paula were lovers – we see Lilian piecing together random pieces of information and various incidents (involving vandalism of her car and the ransacking of her home office) that apparently suggest that Paula did not commit suicide as Valerie claims but was murdered either by Valerie or Simon. Lilian takes her concerns to the police but the police appear uninterested. Thereafter Lilian starts stalking Valerie and Simon, even going so far as to drive all the way to Simon’s country house in Chérence and rifling through his garbage. Lilian persuades Gaby to assist in her investigations which include discovering that the prescriptions Lilian gave to Paula were doctored and that Simon picked up the medications from the pharmacy, strengthening Lilian’s suspicions against the widower. Lilian finds evidence that Paula’s aunt Pearl, who died before Paula did, bequeathed a large sum of money to Paula, and deduces that Simon must have killed Pearl as well as Paula. Lilian’s snooping culminates in a midnight trip back to Chérence where Lilian attempts to find the missing cassette of her last meeting with Paula in Simon’s house: while rummaging through Simon’s private papers (Simon being distracted by Gaby claiming to have run out of petrol while driving through Chérence), Lilian is interrupted by the young son of Simon’s new girlfriend so, using the hypnosis used on her by Pierre’s hypno-therapist, she convinces the boy that he is only dreaming!
In the end, Lilian’s investigations come to naught: the police notify Lilian that they have a suspect, who turns out to be Pierre; he confesses everything to Lilian but the psychoanalyst declines to press charges against him. Lilian reunites with her old psychiatrist who chastises her for breaking psychoanalytic protocol in prescribing medication to Paula. Simon pays an unexpected visit to Lilian, telling her that she is partly responsible for Paula’s death and returning the missing cassette to her. Playing the cassette back, Lilian realises that Paula (who may have secretly stolen the cassette in the first place) doctored the prescriptions and used the medicines to poison her aunt – but then stricken with guilt at what she had done, Paula took her own life.
As film noir, which most film critics seem to assume it is, “Vie Privée” is a failure but it’s not really meant to be a crime or mystery thriller in the modern sense; rather, it’s a Hitchcockian-style romance / comedy thriller in which the core element is Lilian rediscovering love and life with Gaby and Julien’s young family, agreeing to be friends (if not lovers) with Gaby and to see him a bit more often, and bonding with Julien’s baby if not the baby’s parents. Lilian gets rid of her cassettes and minidiscs – Julien tells her minidiscs are becoming more expensive anyway – and resolves to listen to her patients more carefully. Pierre ends up becoming her patient again, the hypnotherapy seemingly having not worked. Perhaps Lilian has realised at last that her view of reality and truth is flawed, and that to have a better understanding of people and events – and to really change people’s lives for the better – she needs to listen to people, to pay more attention at what they are saying, and to realise that there can be more versions of reality and truth running in parallel with her point of view.
The film rests squarely on Foster’s shoulders and, as one would expect, she carries it superbly with her charisma and ability, whether in situations approaching terror or in the most farcical incidents. Auteuil sparkles as Gaby who goes along with Lilian’s harebrained schemes – you almost wish Foster and Auteuil could do another flick together as Gaby and Lilian investigating another improbable crime caper as they trade barbs – and the rest of the cast put in performances ranging from decent (if limited) to good. The film’s presentation is glossy and sharp, and owes much inspiration to past Hitchcock films like “Vertigo”, particularly in its surreal scene of Lilian’s hypnotherapy session and the way in which Lilian’s investigation of a possible murder mirrors “Vertigo” character Scottie Ferguson’s pursuit of Madeleine’s murderer.
Director Rebecca Zlotowski must be secretly laughing at most reviews of this work that interpret it as a failed mystery thriller and not as the Hitchcock-inspired romantic comedy masquerading as film noir that it actually is.