Vie Privée
Director: Rebecca Zlotowski
Writer: Anne Berest, Rebecca Zlotowski, Gaëlle Macé
Cast: Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste, Luàna Bajrami, Noam Morgensztern, Sophie Guillemin, Frederick Wiseman, Park Ji-min
Seen on: 1.5.2026

Content Note: suicide

Plot:
Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster) is a renouned psychoanalyst. When she hears that her patient Paula (Virginie Efira) has committed suicide, she is shocked – and then she becomes suspicious. Faced with Paula’s grieving family, her daughter Valérie (Luàna Bajrami) and her widower Simon (Mathieu Amalric) who display a lot of anger, she decides that an investigation is in order into the true circumstances of Paula’s death. With the help of her own ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil) Lilian tries to find the true explanation, and to get rid of her ceaseless crying that started just after she heard the news.

Vie Privée is the Planetarium-Zlotowski at work, unfortunately, and not the Easy Girl-Zlotowski. Meaning that it lost me pretty soon, had me cringing a few times with its depiction of psychotherapy and felt generally all over the place. Not even Foster’s performance saved this one for me.

I am a psychotherapist myself, though not a psychoanalyst. And while there are a few reasons why I never felt that psychoanalysis was for me, the way that it is depicted in this film is so bad, it’s close to libelous. It is only trumped by the depiction of hypnotherapy that simply fantastical. Either way, the entire thing had me literally cringing in my seat and made it hard for me to suspend my disbelief and meet the film on its own terms, I will admit.

And those terms are not uninteresting. I mean, the idea of the psychotherapist who struggles to deal with her own life and feelings is not exactly new, but I mean, it is much harder to deal with your own shit than with other people’s, so there is something to it for sure. And Foster gives one hell of a performance, giving us really many facets of Lilian. She is definitely the best part about the film.

The trouble is that the film then teases at a lot of stuff but never goes anywhere with it. There is some sapphic tension. There is mention of antisemitism. There is the absolutely horrendous things Lilian says to her son (Vincent Lacoste) that the film just brushes off with a general shrug towards „but she has grown now“.

That means the film is a pretty big mess. A mess that really starts to drag. I actually fell asleep for about 10 minutes or so. My friend explained the part I missed to me, but it didn’t make things really any more coherent, or the solution any more satisfying.

Summarizing: better luck with Zlotowski’s next film, I guess.