★★½ (2½ out of 4)
There should have been more to a comic mystery thriller that features two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster speaking formidable French than the trifle that is “A Private Affair,” now breezing its way through theaters on the strength of her star presence.
Foster plays Dr. Lilian Steiner, an expat American psychiatrist working in Paris with the cool precision of an unflappable pro. She’s been concerned that Paula (Virginie Efira), a patient she’s been treating for years, has missed her last three appointments. When she is told that Paula has committed suicide, her world is thrown into chaos. Is it her fault? Or is Paula the victim of foul play? Lillian thinks it must be murder and sets out to solve the case.
There are definite comic overtones to the script that director Rebecca Zlotowski (“An Easy Girl,” “Other People’s Children”) has written with Anne Berest. A shrink plays amateur sleuth is a formula open to many comic possibilities. And for a while it fulfills them as Lillian enlists her still smitten ex-husband, Gabriel (French legend Daniel Auteuil), to help her get to the bottom of this mystery and why Paula’s husband, Simon (Mathieu Amalric), blames Lillian for not seeing the warning signs and for prescribing the antidepressants on which she overdosed.
Gaby, as Lillian calls her ex, is an optometrist who’s noticed a remarkable thing about Lillian’s eyes. There are tears in them, something he never encountered in their marriage and the birth of their now adult son, Julien (Vincent Lacoste), with whom she’s never been close and who now has a child of his own.
Emotion is something Lillian reliably withholds, a fact that director Zlotowski exploits to broad comic effect in a collage of scenes showing Lillian bursting into wildly inappropriate tears while listening to her patients babble on about assorted banalities.
After a visit from Paula’s pregnant daughter Valérie (Luàna Bajrami), Lillian is more convinced than ever that Simon is guilty of murder since he picked up the Rx with which Paula allegedly offed herself. It’s here that “A Private Life” (“Vie privée”) detours into farcical situations from which it never recovers, overdosing on silliness especially when Lillian and Gaby break into a home in a Parisian suburb where they believe Simon is cohabitating with another woman and child.
Jodie Foster’s attempt at a French soufflé falls disappointingly flat.
The mechanics of the plot are clunky to the max, notably when an inheritance from a wealthy aunt (Aurore Clément) is introduced as a motive for murder, strengthened by a break-in at Lillian’s flat where tapes of her sessions with Paula are stolen. The resolution of all this skullduggery may make you say as I did, “Come on, really?”
I usually hate dream sequences, but one of them makes a kind of sense. Under hypnosis, Lillian
imagines that she and Paula are cellists in a wartime orchestra recital in occupied France surrounded by Nazis, suggesting the antisemitism that plagued both women. It also suggests that Lillian and Paula were lovers in a past life. That might explain Lillian’s tears. It’s a potent idea that “A Private Life” never even remotely develops, so don’t get your hopes up.
What “A Private Life” offers, besides the loveliness of Paris, is the teamwork of Foster and Auteuil, who suggest a relationship both lived-in and relatable. Passion? Not so much. But a kinship and understanding that feels more lasting. Zlotowski, caught in the chaos of blending Hitchcockian mystery and mature romance with clownish farce, needed to mix her ingredients with more finesse. As a result, Foster’s attempt at a French soufflé falls disappointingly flat.