DIRECTOR
Rebecca Zlotowsky
Other People’s Children, An Easy Girl, Grand Central

STARS
Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste and Luàna Bajrami

An all-star French cast and a French-speaking Jodie Foster headline this intricate and engrossing light drama that discloses an important little reminder to us all by the end.

It’s also not the first time Jodie Foster speaks fluent French in a film either. She last did this in 2004s A Very Long Engagement, alongside French classic Amelie’s Audrey Tautou and first starred in a French-speaking role at the age of 14 in Moi, Fleur Bleue from 1977, off the back of early education at a French-language private school in Los Angeles.

Speaking of private, in A Private Life, or Vie privée, Jodie Foster plays experienced psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, who might want to think about advertising for a receptionist to be dealing with what she is as the movie begins. A disgruntled patient demands his money back paid over the years to cure his smoking addiction after a singular trip to a hypnotist results in his quitting. There are also missed appointments and late payments Lilian is chasing up from another regular patient. Unbeknown to her until receiving a phone call, that patient, Paula, has passed away in suspicious circumstances, and this is where Lilian takes it upon herself to switch professions from being a qualified private health specialist to an unqualified and presumptuous private investigator!

Honestly, viewing A Private Life had me feeling a similar way to my first ever counselling appointment! A sheer over-abundance of internal dialogue on my part desperately queueing to be vocally exited that stretch across various subject matters all in a limited session time certainly had me overwhelmed and all over the shop! Though overwhelm is certainly one of the sentiments experienced for me throughout A Private Life, it wasn’t the dominant one and there are many more favourable feelings had that can be almost entirely attributed to an absolute strength of the film; its screenplay. Co-writers Anne Berest, Gaëlle Macé and Rebecca Zlotowsky (director of this film) have collaborated with genuine creativity in concocting the central plot by adding numerous elements that bring fascinating detail to the story, involve supporting characters in unexpected ways and make the film as a whole impressively layered. Without getting into any of its specifics to ensure this review remains spoiler-free for you, the path this story takes that starts out as an awkward and visible bodily issue Lilian is having and how these developments interfere with her rogue private investigations into the death of her patient is nothing short of being incredibly inventive and is highly alluring to watch. Where the overwhelm becomes part of that overall present, at least for me, is in its fast-paced and continuous progression of the ever-deepening plot and the constant dialogue, simultaneously. Just somewhere in its middle stages, a moment to absorb everything that has unfolded to date and do a mental connecting of its dots, so to speak, is all that feels like is needed. Without this, some uncertainty and confusion did set in. 

I started this review focusing on Jodie Foster and it is fitting to also end it that way. Foster has publicly said herself she feels like a different actor performing in French. Witnessing what we do in Vie privée, I couldn’t agree more. While the versatile actor is pretty great in every role she fills, this is such a classy performance from her alongside the French elite, and I do hope to see her in another French-speaking role someday.

A Private Life is showing in selected cinemas across Australia from May 14th, 2026.

Moviedoc thanks Transmission Films and TM Publicity for providing a screener link to watch and review this film.

Review by Leigh for Moviedoc

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