A Private Life (2025)
Academy Award winner Jodie Foster stars in the French language mystery-drama A Private Life where she plays a psychiatrist investigating the death of one of her patients. It's no surprise that Foster is very good here, delivering a nuanced performance, but unfortunately the film's central mystery isn't all that compelling.
Psychiatrist Lilian Steiner (Foster) discovers that a patient of hers, Paula (Virginie Efira), has died from an apparent suicide. Like TV's Quincy, however, Lilian suspects murder. The mystery trail eventually leads Lilian to see a hypnotist (Sophie Guillemin), and in her hypnotherapy session, Lilian has visions of herself as a male Jewish cellist in Nazi-occupied Paris, and Paula is her mistress. If these scenes with the visions were more frequent and more thought out, then maybe they wouldn't come off as hokey as they do.
Besides the central mystery, we also get drama between Lilian and her strained relationship with her son Julien (Vincent Lacoste). This side story is actually much more effective than the main plot.
Lilian eventually teams up with her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil) to solve the mystery, and along the way, they rekindle their romance. A scene where Gabriel sneaks into a potential suspect's house to swipe some potential physical evidence should have been a tension filled sequence, but it's played more for attempted laughs. It doesn't come off as that funny. Clearly, these characters are no Nick and Nora from The Thin Man.
Foster's fine
performance almost saves A Private Life, but director and co-writer
Rebecca Ziotowski rarely injects the story with much urgency.
