On Screen: “A Private Life”
A Private Life
Not one of Jodie Foster’s best films, but unusual because — in her protagonist performance — she speaks impeccable French, making “A Private Life” more of a curiosity than a must-see.
When Paris-based American psychoanalyst Lilian Steiner (Foster) learns that her patient of nine years, Paula (Virginie Efira), committed suicide, she sets out to prove that she was actually murdered, enlisting help from her ex-husband, Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), an ophthalmologist.
Suspects include Paula’s pregnant daughter Valerie (Luana Bajrami) and philandering husband Simon (Mathieu Amalric).
Along the way, Lilian consults a hypnotist (Sophie Guillemin) and enters a hallucinatory dream state in which she and her late patient were sapphic lovers in a previous life — as cellists in an orchestra in the early 1940s during the Nazi occupation.
While it’s not the first time Foster has acted in French, it’s the most significant role in the language that she’s ever played, working with a director — Rebecca Zlotowski — who co-wrote the script with Anne Berest with her in mind.
This Hitchcockian drama has tinges of a noir-ish psychological thriller but never quite comes together convincingly. In Variety, Zlotowski described Foster’s stoic, stubborn character as “a very bad therapist in the beginning who becomes a slightly better therapist at the end.” Regrettably, it’s not much of a breakthrough.
In the New York Times, Foster called this film “a trial balloon,” with perhaps more to come. “I am a different person in that language,” she noted. “I have a whole host of other things to express. I would maybe even like to direct in French.”
Background: From the age of nine, Jodie Foster attended the Lycee Francais de Los Angeles, a private school devoted to bilingual education. Her fluency enabled her to appear in several French-language movies over the years, including “Stop Calling Me Baby” (1977) and “A Very Long Engagement” (2004). She often dubs tracks in French for her English-language films.
On the Grange Gauge of 1 to 10, “A Private Life” is a convoluted, conspiratorial 6, streaming on Prime Video and Apple TV.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.