“Shrink”-ing Situations
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue below [or near purple] is a link to something in the above title or the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
A Private Life (Rebecca Zlotowski) rated R 108 min.
Here’s the trailer:
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If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
WHAT HAPPENS: Dr. Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster) is a confident Jewish-American psychiatrist living/working in Paris where patient problems have recently arisen. First, Pierre (Noam Morgensztern) is threatening to sue her over the ongoing time and money he’s invested in her procedures (to no avail) to break his smoking habit, but he’s recently seen a hypnotherapist, Jessica Grangé (Sophie Guillemin), who seemingly cured him after one session. Far more serious is the death of another long-term patient, Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efria), who appears to have committed suicide using an overdose of Steiner’s prescribed meds. Paula’s daughter, Valérie Cohen-Solal (Luàna Bajrami), invites Lilian to the wake where the furious widower, Simon Cohen-Solal (Mathieu Amalric), throws her out. Lilian also has a strained relationship with her adult son, Julien Haddad-Park (Vincent Lacoste), leading to Lilian's constant crying, prompting a visit to her sympathetic ophthalmologist ex-husband, Gabriel Haddad (Daniel Auteuil), after which she visits Pierre’s hypnotherapist for help. This leads to a dream-state where she sees herself as a male Jewish cellist in Nazi-occupied Paris with Paula as her fellow musician/pregnant lover, Simon as the conductor with a pistol instead of a baton. Lillian listens to old recordings of sessions with Paula where the woman notes Valérie would kill her if she learned Simon’s not her biological father, which leads Lilian to fear Valérie killed her mother so she sets out to find evidence to prove that fear leading to a series of mysterious phone calls, vandalization of her car and office. Then Lilian begins to suspect Simon is the killer, prompted by news Paula’s aunt Pearl left her a large inheritance, now the properly of Valérie and Simon. In another hypnotic dream Lilian sees Simon shooting Paula; when awake she finds Simon’s now living with another woman. ⇒Pierre re-emerges in this narrative, admits he made the phone calls, did the vandalism as his smoking addiction’s returned. Lilian then discovers Paula used her meds to poison Pearl, then killed herself out of guilt, Lilian reconciles with Julien, treats Gabriel as a close friend, resumes her practice with Pierre as a client.⇐ There are various other nuances in this plot, so if you’d like to explore them visit this site.
SO WHAT? In hopes the preceding plot summary intrigued you enough to want to see this film, I’ve saved the possible-deal-breaker for this section of the posting: This is a French film so except for a few brief dialogue exchanges in English all the rest is in French (apparently some in Spanish too, but I was too busy reading the captions to notice), so unless you’re adamantly-opposed to such an intrusion on your viewing experience (as a lot of U.S. moviegoers seem to be, which probably contributed to this film’s meager stateside box-office income), be forewarned that unless you’re as fluent in French, as is Ms. Foster, you’ll have to do a lot of reading to complement your viewing (as the spoken words enter your consciousness as well, I think you’ll be impressed by Foster’s command of this second language, spoken as if it were her native tongue), You should also know that unlike some TV murder mystery series (such as PBS’ My Life Is Murder)—where an initially-seemingly-solid-suspect is found to not be the person responsible for the featured death, thereby giving the featured detective a reason to probe deeper into the fuller details of what often starts out as an assumed accident—this plot may begin like that before it evolves into an unexpected closure.
Yes, Dr. Steiner’s convinced Paula was a murder victim, not a suicide, but the … Private Life story takes us in different directions than we’d been led to assume if we consume on a regular basis (as I and my wife, Nina, eagerly do) such TV fare as Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Midsomer Murders, The Brokenwood Mysteries (all on PBS along with many other similar shows), Only Murders in the Building (Hulu) as well as more gruesome miniseries such as I Will Find You (Netflix) and the latest incarnation of Cape Fear (Apple TV). So it’s clear we’re primed to watch murder mysteries (assuming there was a murder in A Private Life as Lilian is determined to uncover). What we found was not at all what we expected, yet it was fascinating nevertheless. But, I don’t blame you if you feel that I should have more to say about this film if I enjoyed it so much; all I can say in my own defense is some successful works of art are best encountered more by just experiencing them as they unfold rather than trying to analyze in detail what’s fascinating about their components and the structuring of these intriguing elements. Still, there are others more eloquent than me in verbalizing such fine aesthetic experiences so I’ve included a couple of examples just below for your edification.
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: A Private Life (Vie privée) is often noted as a 2025 film because it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2025 (also that year it was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and some others), then was released in France on November 26, 2025; however, what I care about is when something comes to American domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters or streaming, so for me this is still a 2026 offering (the only ones I intend to review for the rest of this year and, surely, into 2027 as upcoming late year releases will take their time to find me as winter flows into spring) as it had its northern North America debut on January 16, 2026, made $1.4 million in a limited run. ($10.3 million worldwide as it had a better presence in other countries where dialogue in a non-primary language [or French where France is concerned] isn’t the generally-automatic-turnoff that occurs with such fare for numerous U.S. audiences.) Now, though, to see it will require streaming where you’ll find it’s free to Netflix subscribers (if you want to sample their vast holdings it’s $8.99 for a month [with ads] or $19.99 [no ads]) or you can go to either Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV where it rents for $5.99 (in all options English subtitles are provided for the benefit of monolinguists like me). The CCAL’s supportive of your investment in this option with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at 82% while the normally-less-enthusiastic Metacritic average score is 67%. As an example of one who agrees with me in support of A Private Life is Manohla Dargis of The New York Times (MC 80): “Zlotowski, working from a script that she wrote with Anne Berest, persuasively establishes the coordinates of Lilian’s cosseted, oh-so-proper haute bourgeois life with illuminating details. Everything gleams in this woman’s world, from her smart, perfect bob to the luxurious surfaces in her spacious apartment and the leather chair where she sits as her patients share their deepest and most banal concerns. Her nice, organized world begins to fall to pieces, though, when she learns that Paula has died […] Zlotowski similarly thickens her plot with romance, revelations of trauma and surrealistic visions, but with a light touch that becomes progressively playful. The more Lilian discovers, the less cleareyed she seems and the more winning her personality becomes.” Well said!
For every rainbow, though, sometimes you just get rain, such as with Peter Bradshaw of U.K.’s The Guardian (MC 60): “[…] a genial, preposterous psychological mystery caper: the tale of an American psychoanalyst in Paris, watchably played by Jodie Foster in elegant French, who suspects that a patient who reportedly committed suicide was actually murdered. Zlotowski is perhaps channelling Hitchcock or De Palma, or even late-period Woody Allen – or maybe Zlotowski has, like so many of us, fallen under the comedy spell of Only Murders in the Building on TV and fancied the idea of bringing its vibe to Paris and transforming the mood – slightly – into something more serious. […] Vie Privée canters along to a faintly silly, slightly anticlimactic conclusion and audiences might have been expecting a bigger and more sensational twist. Yet Foster’s natural charisma sells it.” As always, I leave it up to you regarding which critical direction aligns best with your tastes, but if you don’t mind a lot of reading while watching, along with an unconventional plot, I think you’d find this film to be a good investment, if for no other reason than just seeing marvelous (2-time Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar winner) Jodie Foster again. Or, maybe you’d prefer audio to video by listening to my usual review-ending Musical Metaphor choice, this time being Leonard Cohen’s "Hallelujah" (on his 1984 Various Positions album) which, I admit, doesn’t relate directly to this film’s content but has allusions to concepts of failed life choices, self-criticism, misguided energy, yet reconsidered acceptance. Besides, I couldn’t think of anything else this week and this song’s wonderful to hear, so enjoy! (I know Nina will which makes me happy with this odd choice anyway.)
SHORT TAKES
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