By M. Faust
(Image above: Jodie Foster in “A Private Life,” © Jérôme Prébois)

Psychotherapist Dr. Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster) is not having a good day. The guy up the spiral staircase from her Paris apartment insists on blasting the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” even when she complains that she can’t hear her patient. (She’s lying about that.) One of her regulars shows up to tell her that he’s quitting because a hypnotist was able to cure the problem he’s been seeing her about for eight years. He’s not the only one who won’t be coming back: when Lilian phones her patient Paula to tell her that she will have to pay for the three sessions she has missed, she discovers there was a good reason—she’s dead. 

Beneath the detached appearance that all psychotherapists show to their patients (well, all the ones I’ve ever seen in movies, anyway), Lilian always felt a bit of a connection to Paula. So when her daughter invites her to come to the family house to pay her respects, she accepts. There she is shocked to learn that Paula committed suicide, and that her husband (Mathieu Amalric) holds Lilian to blame. 

From there, the plot proceeds as if free-associating in the way that Lilian encourages her patients to do. The usually stoic Lilian finds herself shedding tears for no reason, to the bemusement of her patients. For help with this and investigating Paula’s death, she enlists the help of her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), who is happy to hear from her. A session of hypnosis reveals a past-life connection (or is it simply a dream or hallucination?) with Paula. Then there’s her troubled relationship with her son (Vincent Lacoste) and grandchild … 

Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski, A Private Life is the perfect movie for a winter’s day when you just want to get out of your house and sit in a nice warm theater for a few hours. Sometimes it is Hitchcockian by way of David Lynch. Sometimes it evokes classic Hollywood comedies of remarriage. Made in France, it offers the enjoyable dislocative spectacle of Foster (proudly showing her age) flawlessly speaking that language. From the get-go, it tells you that it’s not taking itself too seriously—that spiral staircase is too hoary a symbol, especially accompanied by David Byrne’s Norman Bates impression (and hey, he’s singing in French too!) Veteran arthouse viewers will enjoy appearances by Aurore Clément, Irène Jacob and master documentarian Frederick Wiseman. And Foster’s scenes with the great Daniel Auteuil, whose mad eyes were a feature of so many French classics of the past four decades, are themselves worth the cost of ticket. Now playing at the Dipson Amherst Theater.