In Rebecca Zlotowski’s new feature film, “A Private Life,” screening at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center, we learn about multiple private lives. It opens with the short-tempered American psychiatrist Lilian (Jodie Foster), who has been living in Paris for a long time. She is methodically, with an exasperated air, preparing for her next client in her private home office. Aside from Lilian’s occasional English curses, she, and thus Foster, conducts her life entirely in fluent French.
A surprise visit from a client without an appointment annoys Lilian, but she takes him in. He is furious. He has been coming for countless years, hoping to stop smoking, to no avail. But he angrily tells Lilian that in a single visit to a hypnotist, he’s been cured, and so has come to terminate his and Lilian’s work together.
As he shuts the door, the phone rings. Another client’s daughter tells Lilian that her mother, Paula (Virginie Efira), is dead. Lilian is bewildered, and when she shows up at the gathering for Paula, Paula’s husband flies into a rage, inexplicably screaming at Lilian to get out.
Walking away, Lilian dictates into her ever-present cassette recorder: “The husband’s reaction is unexpected. Aggression toward me, redirected guilt toward the therapist, and unprocessed emotion.” Lilian, ever the distant psychiatrist, goes through life emotionally removed.
However, the next thing Lilian knows, she is crying tears she cannot control. They stream unbidden down her face on the train, as she walks through the streets, and even when treating patients. Baffled because she purports to feel no emotion about the death of her patient, Lilian visits her ex-husband, Gaby (Daniel Auteuil), an ophthalmologist, convinced it is only because something is wrong with her eyes, only to find out they are fine.
Even more mysterious is a visit from Paula’s daughter, who tells Lilian that her mother died from suicide, using drugs that Lilian had prescribed. Lilian, shocked and unable to fathom why, is even more nonplussed when the daughter, urging Lilian to find out what happened, leaves her with a note from Paula containing what appears to be a secret message.
The plot thickens when Lilian reluctantly seeks out the hypnotist to try to cure her unending tears. Skeptically, Lilian agrees to the hypnotist’s memory-based therapy session, which, through a dreamlike sequence, indicates Lilian had a past life with Paula during the German occupation in World War II.
As Lilian becomes convinced that Paula was murdered, the film takes off into a twisting psychological thriller with a playful streak of comedy, revealing much more about Lilian’s private life, as well as that of Paula and her husband.
Interestingly, at one point, Lilian, in her search for the truth, says, “Psychologist. Knowing people’s lives and secrets, without being able to act. Not being able to do anything.” Yet that’s not quite true. Lilian transforms as she learns more about herself by confronting her most deeply held beliefs and the foundations of her personality — and Foster, captivatingly, in French no less, expresses every nuance of the journey.
“A Private Life” screens at the M.V. Film Center. For more information, visit mvfilmsociety.com.
