Vie privée
Written by Dilan Fernando
Vie Privée (2025) is writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski’s follow-up to Les Enfants des Autres (2022) also starring Virginie Efira. Both films share themes of acceptance and connection which are necessary for forming or reforming relationships. With Les Enfants Zlotowski looks at Rachel (Virginie Efira), a divorced middle school teacher who embarks on a new romance with a single father with a daughter. In Vie, Lilian (Jodie Foster) is a psychiatrist who begins to probe the death of one of her patients. Both films have their lead characters looking from the inside in at relationships and how they fit within their dynamics. Each hope to understand what compels them toward these people in their lives while also trying to better understand themselves. With Zlotowski leaving the audience with a question about the characters, ‘Did they succeed?’.
Vie Privée opens with Talking Heads hit song Psycho Killer, setting both the mood and the pace of Foster’s quest into closure of her part (if any) in the death of patient Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira). Despite her expertise in prescribing and diagnosing her patients according to their irrationalities, Lilian appears to be a textbook psychiatrist on paper; however, she lacks the ability to connect with her patients. There’s a degree of sympathy that is required between psychiatrists and their patients. One of whom professes all their feelings and hopes to gain some semblance of reassurance. Look at Lilian’s body language in the early scenes in her office, she’s dressed prim and proper yet exudes disinterest as her patient blathers on. However, her patient mentions that the therapy she’s been providing has been ineffective for him quitting smoking and after resorting to visiting a hypnotist his affliction is gone. Lilian is taken aback by this revelation that her expertise has been usurped by someone who she considers but would never admit to be a hack. Lilian, vents her frustration by knocking on her upstairs neighbours door who incessantly plays loud music as a way to get a rise out of her.
Vie Privée is worth watching just to see Rebecca Zlotowski trying something new yet again (even if it isn’t her strongest work).
Returning to her office, Lilian is met by Valérie Cohen-Solal (Luana Bajrami) who informs Lilian of her mother Paula’s death. The two of them discuss how Paula died and Lilian is given details of the funeral, hesitating on whether or not she should go. Deciding to go she walks into the apartment as everyone clammers around mourning and grieving. When she sees Paula’s body in her bed dressed in all white she sees Paula’s distraught husband Simon (Mathieu Almaric) with an empty wide-eyed look on his face. Once Lilian greets Simon he erupts into a tirade of Lilian’s negligence of Paula and banishes her from the house. It’s here where the mystery-thriller plot slowly starts to take shape.
Feeling embarrassed and slightly resigned Lilian goes to visit her only son Julien (Vincent Lacoste) who’s been busy with his newborn baby. Lilian doesn’t go empty handed as she asks Vincent to order her some more cassette tapes and refuses to see the baby as she wants to let the child rest. This is Lilian’s odd way of connection, however, if her pride weren’t so in the way, maybe she could see place in relationships better? Lilian also visits her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil) at his optometrist office for an eye exam (ironic considering the person Lilian must look at is herself). The pair show that despite being divorced they are still on speaking terms and possibly still good friends.
Lilian begins to let her anxiety and unhealthy obsession with Paula’s death fuel her irrational behaviour going against many of the principles she’s set to live her life by. As she goes further into understanding what might have driven Paula to suicide, Lilian realizes how distant she was from Paula despite the length of doctor-patient relationship. This may be the revelation Lilian needed but perhaps she yet again overlooks the obvious? The film’s handling of Paula’s suicide and the intercutting of the Paula’s psychiatric sessions with Lilian are interesting, possibly a reference Robert Bresson’s Une Femme Douce (1969). It seems that Lilian is more connected to her patients in death rather than when they were alive. Why? Could it be because Lilian no longer holds possible answers of how patients can begin to look at their lives differently, relinquishing her power? Or, because she gets to play patient and piece the fragments of information together to create some conclusion and provide herself with some closure.
Foster carries the film on her shoulders with some wonderful supporting performances particularly, Efira whose screen time totals about fifteen minutes. Dr. Goldstein (Frederick Wiseman) as Lilian’s therapist-mentor, Perle Friedman (Aurore Clément) as Paula’s elderly relative, Vera (Irène Jacob) and hypnotist Jessica Grangé (Sophie Guiellemin) all deliver in their roles on this strange and wild journey. At times Vie may seem like a routine mystery-thriller but the route it takes is one that makes the film worth watching. Whatever, you take away from the film, know that connection with others comes from the connection with oneself, which may not be understandable to everyone. C’est la vie.
Dilan Fernando graduated with a degree in Communications from Brock University. ”Written sentiments are more poetic than spoken word. Film will always preserve more than digital could ever. Only after a great film experience can one begin to see all that life has to offer.“