‘A Private Life’ Review: A Delightful PAIRED JODIE FOSTER AND DANIEL AUTEUIL ESCAPE INJURY IN A MESSY BUT PLEASURABLE GENRE COLLISION

Caunght Between Sophisticated Comedy and Silly Fluff, Between Hitchcockian Mystery and Zany Amateur Sleuth Caper, A Private Life (Vie Privée) Is a Lot More Fun Than Probably DesERves to be Thanks to the Disarming Chemistry of Its Seasoned Leads, Jodie Fososter and Daniel Auteuil. Rebecca Zlotowski’s Latest Doesn’s An Easy Girl or the imocial complexit of Other People’s ChildrenHer Last Two Films. This One is Too Busy Careening All Over the Tonal Map for Any of that. What it dos have is the French Director’s Customary Light Touch; It’s Chaos with Charm.

Foster’s French – At Least to Tese Ears – Sounds Impecable and This Is Her First Feature in the Language Since 2004’s A VERY LONG ENGIGENT. She Jumps Into It With A spiky vitality and anxpectioned playfulness that buoy the movie as Much as zlotowski’s zippy Direction.

Her Character, Dr. Lilian Steiner, is An American Psychoanalyst Working Out of Her Home Office in Paris. AT FIRST GLANCE, SHE SEMS LIKE CLASSIC FOSTER MATERIAL – FIERCELY INTELLIGENT, CONTROLLED, PROFESSIONAL, A TOCH GUARDED. But as Lilian Starts Unraveling, She Becomes Impulsive, Irrational, Emocial, Insecure About Her Work and at Times Almost Ditzy.

Coming Off Her Brilliant Turn as The Haunted, Tightly Wound Police Chief in TRUE DETACTIVE: Night Countryis a pleasure to watch foster loosen up and have funh with a role, getting to exercise comedy chops too seldom tapped in her American Projects of Recent Decades.

Just the novelty of watching her act in Another Language, as a woman in her adapted Country Long Enough to Absorb Many of the Mannerisms Yet Still Markedly Different. And WHEN LILIAN GETS FLUSTERED OR ANNOYED AND MUTTERS ACCASIONAL “MOTHERFUCKER” OR SOME OF Other Expelive in English, It Humanizes Her, ACKNOWLEDGING THAT HUSE.

The Script, Co-Written by Anne Berest and Zlotowski, Right Off The Bat Throws Curveballs at Lilian to Inject NAGING DOBTS INTO HERK. She Learns that reason her patient of many years, paula (virginie efira), had Missed her last Three Sessions Without Canceling Is that She Committed Suicide.

She’s Still Digesting that News, Asking Herself Wy She She Saw No Red Flags, WHEN AND Angry Patient (Noam Morgensztern) Bursts in. He Aggressely Informs Lilian that his many sessions with her to quit smoking weketing a waste of time and money, but he kicked the habit with Jet.

Lilian Makes The Mistake of Going to Paula’s Home While Family and Friends are sitting shiva. She’s Ordered to Leave by Grieving Widower Simon (Mathieu Amalric), Who Flies Into A Rage, Shouting That After All The Years Lilian Had Been Treating His Wife, Shee Should. Later, He Accuses Her of Over-Prescribing Antidepressants, Leading to The Overdose That Kildled Her.

Meanwhile, Lilian, Who Has Never Been Able to Cry, Starts Shedding Tears Uncontrollably, Often Without Knowing It’s HapPening. She consults her ex-Husband Gabriel (Auteuil), An Eye Doctor Whose Drolll Response to Seeing Her Weep for the FIRST TIME IS, “IT SUITS YOU.” Lilian Sems on Better Terms with Gaby, As She Calls HIM, THAN WITH Their Adult Son Julien (Vincent Lacoste), with Whom She’s Never Been Close. That imocial block now expands Grandson.

Zlotowski Inserts A Funny Montage of Patients Banging on About their Mosstly Banal Issues While Lilian, mortified to appetar so unprofessional WaterWorks.

In a freudian detour that’s arguable the movie’s least successfully integrated Scene, Lilian tries fixing the tear duct problem by seeing a hypnotist Coaxes the Skeptical Shrink to Return to Her Mother’s Womb. Suddenly, The Hypnotist is guiding lilian Through a vast Red Space in Another Dimination with Various Doors and Stairways.

Under hypnosis, Lilian Enters a Hall WHERE she and paula are cellists in an orchestra recital in Early 1940s Occupied France; Julian is one of the uniform Nazis in the Audence and Simon Condux with a Baton that Becomes a Gun. I Like A Stoner’s Take On TruffAut’s The Last Metro – EnJoyably Arch But Too Loopy to have Much Relevance Beyond the Hypnotist’s Assertion that Lilian and Paula Were Lovers in A Past Life. All Very Shirley Maclaine.

IT does, However, Stop The Weeping, Address Lilian’s Disgust with Antisemitism and Plant A Subliminal Hint As to Wha Was Never ABLE TO BOND WITH JULIAN. Not that any of that is clarly articulated.

The Movie is on More Accessible Gund Back in the Real World, WHERE A VISIT FROM PAULA’S PREGNANT DAUGHTER VALERIE (LUWA BAJRAMI) LEADS LILLER Daughter or Husband. She Enlists of the Amible Gaby to Start Tailing Naily, at Same Time Listening to Her Recordings of Sessions With Paula for Clues.

The MOSTLY Preposteros mystery Thread Never Acquires Much Substance Despite Tossing A Lot of Balls in the Air. Someone Breaks Into Lilian’s APARTMENT AND STEALS The Audio File from Paula’s Final Session; Suspicions ARISE CONCERNING AN INSHERITANCE FROM A Wealthy Aunt (Screen Veteran Aurore Clément, Perhaps a Nod to Louis Malle’s Lacombe, Lucien?); Simon Picked Up Paula’s Medication from the Pharmacy and Possibly Tampered With It; and hells to be leading a double life with Another Woman and A Child Tucked Away in Chérennce, Outside Paris.

These questations are resolved, more or less, in and anticlimactic wrap-up that yields the relativly meager Payoff of Lilian Learning to be a Better Listener and ACCEPTING MOTHER. But The Flimsy Plot Becomes Secondary to the Fizz Genered every Time Foster and Auteuil Share A Scene – Lilian Wired and Gaby Supremely Chill. They toss badinage back and forth with an ease that rescures the movie, and they exchange looks that Point to mutual affoction and desire undimmed by Divorce.

If the messy strands of this genre-blurring film struggle to cohere, the parts that veer Toward a RemariGe Comedy Make It enjoable. A Private Life Rolls Along at A Jaunty Pace, frequently Prodded by Percussive Staccato Bursts of Mononymous Composer Rob’s Whimsical Score. The Glossy, Good-Looking Production Feels Like A Throwback to French From a Few Decades Ago-Middlebrow Passing for Intellectual, Mainstream Commercial Passing For Artthus. But There’s a nostalgic appeal to it, Boosted by an an an unlikely Middle-Agged Rom-Comd Dream Team in Foster and Auteuil.