“A Private Life” (2025) follows Dr. Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster), a psychiatrist who finds out that her patient, Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira), died. She becomes focused on getting to the bottom of what happened to Paula, and during her investigation, unearths some personal issues that she has. Will she spiral out of control, or will she find the answers that she is looking for? Is therapy a waste of time and money or does it serve a purpose? It is a French movie with subtitles for all moviegoers who do not speak the language. Consider yourself warned if you hate foreign films but are excited to see the most recent Foster film. Only you can decide if you love Foster more than you hate reading subtitles.
Foster has been fluent in French since she was fourteen years old, and it is only one of four languages that she can speak. It is rare for an actor to work in another language so even though Foster has been working longer than she has been an adult and is considered one of the undisputed great actors, it is still worth noting that accomplishment and how rare it is. Though “A Private Life” is not billed as a comedy, Foster is funny it, which is not her customary genre. Lilian is a buttoned-up woman who almost imperceptibly unravels as her routine gets upended. Dr. Steiner feels as if she falls somewhere in between going through the motions, but still professional like the therapist in “You Hurt My Feelings” (2023) and the constantly put upon protagonist in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” (2025).
Because it is a French film, and the protagonist is a woman, “A Private Life” could have felt misogynistic in the way that people walk all over Dr. Steiner or use her as a scapegoat. It does not because it is about dealing with loss and how we make everything about ourselves to such an absurd degree. Dr. Steiner is an unreliable narrator, not the best person to herself and others and willfully keeping her inner life at bay. Her foil is Jessica Grangé (Sophie Guillemin), a hypnotherapist and her exact opposite even in the way that she uses the session recordings. In contrast, Grangé is fine with ambiguity and the unknown, respects her patient’s boundaries, protects and prioritizes herself and solves problems immediately. She does not enmesh herself with her patients and does not become dysregulated regardless of how a patent acts without disassociating. Director and cowriter Rebecca Zlotowski films a hypnotic session in an oneiric way linking it to the opening credits, which shows a body lying in the snow, but twitching to life and the backstage between a patient’s underexplored subconscious world whether past trauma or another life. Dr. Steiner is skeptical but convinced that it is a modality that can work, and it does lead to a breakthrough in a counterintuitive way. Near the beginning of the film, she is called frigid. That opening credit body is Dr. Steiner defrosting and finally feeling.
Dr. Steiner reconnects with the people from her past whom she keeps at arm’s length. Gabriel Haddad (Daniel Auteuil), an ophthalmologist who helps her see literally and figuratively, is her ex-husband and only close friend who is not a colleague. They rekindle their relationship. Not going to lie, but it is almost a jump scare to get a close up of Gaby squeezing Dr. Steiner’s boob and going for the goods, which happens to belong to the most prominent lesbian actor in the world. There are sapphic undertones in “A Private Life” but it is never explored and couched as heterosexual within the story’s context. Discourse makes movies sound as if they are filled with the most countercultural, revolutionary, boundary crossing people on Earth, but the number of movies with same sex characters actually doing same sex activities is still rare even after finding a way to make it heterosexual. The same sex attraction is like a magic card trick: time shifting between a therapy session and Dr. Steiner in the present being barefoot and wearing a bathrobe, which could lead a moviegoer to believe for a second that they had a moment. Overall, it is not a big deal within the film’s context and is actually a good sign. She is becoming human. Her ex becomes her investigation partner.
Dr. Steiner also has a chilly relationship with her son, Julien (Vincent Lacoste), who is married to Vanessa (Ji-min Park) and is a new dad. She does a poor job of making excuses to not interact with her grandson (Yun Sok). Her relationship with him colors the way that she interprets the clues to her patient’s death as she interacts with her patient’s daughter, Valérie (Luàna Bajrami), and husband, Simon (Mathieu Amalric). Vera (Irène Jacob) adds fuel to the fire when she shares antidotes about pregnant adult children killing their mothers. Dr. Steiner never seems completely irrational because her deceased patient’s family acts suspiciously and is simultaneously investigating their loved one’s death as if it was a homicide but treat her as if she is the chief suspect or a key witness. In addition, her workplace, which is also her home, is also a hostile environment with a disgruntled patient, Pierre Hallan (Noam Morgensztern) and a loud, rude downstairs neighbor (Scott Agnesi Delpapierre).
A visit to her former therapist and current colleague, Dr. Goldstein (Frederick Wiseman, yes, the octogenarian documentarian), throws cold water on her theories, but not on Dr. Steiner going full tilt into absurd investigation mode. “A Private Life” walks on the knife’s edge of making the possibility of a murder seem credible and the fact that Dr. Steiner’s imagination is running wild. Either way, Dr. Steiner is reinvested in her patients’ lives, reengaged in her own and more empathetic over her patients’ issues. There is a great scene where she is on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette, and her patient joins her. There is no more clinical distance, but a shared, uneasy understanding.
“A Private Life” is one of the rare films that never needed to lead with the characters’ names and relationship to each other. The context clues were sufficient to deduce this information, which is later confirmed. The key to all of Dr. Steiner’s relationships is revealed but not detailed in a blink and miss it scene. Her rosebud is not explained fully so here is a hint: pay attention to her memories of her mom. There is a throwaway line that Dr. Steiner says about her and the other characters being Jewish. It was obvious that Paula and her family were Jewish, but not Dr. Steiner, especially when she goes to Paul’s home to sit Shiva and was clueless about the customs. Her name is not a given clue. While Jewish identity theme is pivotal to the story, it was not obvious until it was explicitly stated.
“A Private Life” is an unconventional, experimental yet still conventional mid-life crisis movie about a woman professional. It probably gets better on repeat viewings but will be discomfiting for American viewers unfamiliar with French sensibilities. Foster fans will love it, and fans of French films worried that the film will be too American can leave their fears outside the theater.
