A visual motif that reoccurs throughout Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest film, A Private Life, is a spiral staircase. Beyond being chic and Parisian in the way of her previous film Other People’s Children, this cyclical structure also alludes to Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Themes of obsession and waning psychological shifts reinforce this reading in A Private Life, evoking quite palpably the Master of the Suspense’s oeuvre, though Zlotowski’s film is less dramatic in tone than that might suggest. Punctuated by whodunnit slapstick humor, A Private Life is a playful one-off anchored by a transatlantic cast and Zlotowski’s trademark sensitivity.
Jodie Foster stars as Lillian Steiner, a psychoanalyst turned amateur sleuth. She appears affluent thanks to her apartment, office, and wardrobe — which includes a casual Goyard tote and Phoebe Philo-esque ease — but the façade soon fades. Within minutes of viewers meeting the protagonist, a client arrives unannounced in order to fire the sleuth after being “cured” by a hypnotist, and then Lillian learns that another, Paula (Virginie Efira), has committed suicide. Devastated by the latter event, Lillian attends her client’s Shiva, where her grief is aggravated by an unsettling interaction with Paula’s bug-eyed husband, Simon (Mathieu Amalric), and daughter, Valérie (Luàna Bajrami). Seeking to understand where things unraveled, Lillian sets the film’s narrative proper in motion with the commencement of her personal investigation.
Similar to John “Scottie” Ferguson in Vertigo, Lillian quickly establishes herself as an unreliable narrator. She insists she isn’t grieving, yet she can’t stop crying. Her tears are so excessive that they streak her face and even spill onto a stranger during a Metro ride. This marks the film’s first rupture from realism, which Zlotowski extends further in a bizarre hypnotherapy session with Jessica (Sophie Guillemin), which Lillian submits to in a bid to cure her uncontrollable weeping. Guided through this so-called “past life,” Lillian discovers that she was apparently a Jewish man living during World War II who impregnated Paula. Both were musicians in the orchestra, with Simon as the conductor, and Lillian convinces herself that this explains Simon’s present-day animosity. As ridiculous as this “past life” sounds, Zlotowski’s tonal shift from the contemporary whodunnit to period piece is seductive. The film’s languid rhythm is jolted awake by a rush of diegetic sound, allowing the transition to work not because of its strangeness, but because of the intimacy Zlotowski lends these visions. Lillian seems invigorated for the first time upon waking up, prompting the question: is there a queer awakening at play?
Lillian has been icy until this point in A Private Life. She’s guarded around her patients, which in fairness could simply be professionalism, but then she’s also awkward around her family. She visits her son Julian (Vincent Lacoste) and his newborn baby, but she refuses to hold the child, much to her son’s dismay. Lillian’s tears also lead her back to her ex-husband Gabriel (the lovely Daniel Auteuil), an optometrist. Gabriel is taken aback by Lillian’s vulnerability during their eye exam. For the first time in years, they are physically close and there’s sexual chemistry. It’s clear that Gabriel still has feelings for his ex, with his wide-eyed gaze and flirty charm, but Lillian is not exactly on the same page.
Paula, it seems, is really in charge of Lillian. The irony is that she’s dead, but this void allows for Lillian’s projections. She leans into fantasy despite the personal reminder that she is “too rational for this.” But is she? Despite having limited evidence, she’s certain that Paula was murdered, so she starts sleuthing on her own; that hypnosis really messed with her vision, both literally and figuratively. She steals packages from Simon’s apartment lobby and rummages through his trash. In her mind, she’s looking for clues, but to everyone else, she’s simply, well, jumping headfirst into the trash. Foster is so convincing in these moments that it’s hard not to fully buy into her performance, and so we wonder: maybe she’s right after all? It’s not until she clashes with the police, who meet her with suspicion, that we see clearly how the world actually perceives her. Gabriel is also duped. He enables her and seems somewhat amused by Lillian’s antics, but it’s not until after their relationship is rekindled that he realizes Lillian has truly lost her marbles. After a family dinner with Juilian goes rogue, Gabriel gets the last word: “You’re building a narrative from this false memory.”
Is there anything more 21st century than getting absorbed by ruminations? A Private Life suggests that not even psychologists are immune. In a lesser film, technology would aid Lillian’s psychosis, but in Zlotowski’s whodunnit, Lillian’s brain does all the work. Foster, for her part, proves that she doesn’t need any props to carry a performance, and she keeps A Private Life psychologically engaging… until it isn’t. Eventually, after several robberies, a little more sleuthing, and some cryptic red paint, the film hits a threshold. Rather than untangling Lillian’s blossoming sexuality, Zlotowski’s film too comfortably settles into mere murder-mystery tropes. The problem is the murder itself is delusion. The real victim, it turns out, is the film’s own sense of purpose.
Published as part of TIFF 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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