Jodie Foster moves to Paris in “A Private Life.”

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Double languages, double lives, double genres. There doesn’t seem to be much in Rebecca Zlotowski’s elegantly composed thriller about a psychoanalyst trying to understand why her long-time patient suddenly took his own life. Well, if she has it. Maybe she was murdered? The genre is also not guaranteed. The drama quickly becomes a thriller that has clear elements of slapstick comedy, but still culminates in drama.

Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster, speaks fluent French) is in free fall from the start without knowing it. The first patient doesn’t show up. The next one comes there and abandons decades of treatment after discovering fast-acting hypnotherapy. The neighbor calls her something like “Nukka” (she has to look the word up on her phone) because she complains about his music and clearly has no interest in her adult son and his new baby.

After the announcement Due to the patient’s alleged suicide, she also suffers from a strange physical symptom: tears flowing from her eyes, which annoyingly leads her to visit her ex-husband, the ophthalmologist (Auteuil in an almost elfin role), the only one undeterred by her apparent coldness. She only realizes that the tears were due to sadness when, in desperation, she visits the aforementioned hypnotherapist, with completely unexpected results.

Transfers and projections slide back and forth before our eyes like different camera filters. The patient’s husband (Amalric is better than he has been for a long time) blames Lilian for his wife’s death, and she in turn suspects him of murder. Or is it the daughter?

Her no-nonsense acting style becomes comical when compared to the transgressions she commits (like sneaking around other people’s gardens…)

Everything is held together and radiates from one point: Foster’s hyper-focused playing and his smooth, high tempo. She moves through the film as if on one long skate (yes, the Winter Olympics influence the metaphors). Her no nonsense-The play style becomes comical when compared to the transgressions she commits (such as sneaking around in other people’s gardens and tricking a child into thinking she is just a dream), exciting when she is a focused analyst/detective, and poignant when her emotions refuse to follow the rules she has set for herself. It’s impressive to be able to achieve so much with such a small role.

While The genres enrich each other, and therefore also take something from each other. Cleaned up, “Et private liv” could have been a great thriller, a crazy, funny comedy or a torturous drama. Instead, it was a very neat little film about an aging Parisian middle class and a Freudian worldview under siege. It’s not wrong either.

See more. Three good films with Daniel Auteuil: “Ett vinterhjärta” (1992), “Queen Margot” (1994), “Motständaren” (2002).

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