Private life: Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil, irresistible with mischief (review)

After the masterful The Children of Others, Rebecca Zlotowski returns with a more confusing film where an apparent Cluedo hides a mischievous comedy of remarriage.

We anticipated it when it came out three years ago and Private Life provides confirmation. There is in Rebecca Zlotowski’s cinema, a before and after The Children of Others, her greatest success to date, the first time where she dared to crack the armor, letting a disheveled romanticism and a skin-deep emotion take the place of a cerebrality that had until then been dominant. It is from this breach that Private Life is born, undoubtedly his most disconcerting film to date. The one where what his characters experience on the screen – this difficulty in distinguishing truth from falsehood – dialogues with the way in which he himself metamorphoses throughout the story.

At its beginning, Private Life indeed has the appearance of Cluedo, in the footsteps of Lilian, a renowned psychiatrist who becomes convinced by the sudden death of one of her patients that it is a murder and decides to carry out her own investigation. Except that little by little, this hunt for the killer will turn into a comedy, taking on a burlesque or even completely pernicious side – notably in scenes of hypnosis which lost members of the Première editorial team en route – before taking its true form. A real comedy of remarriage, born from the adventures that Lilian goes through with her ex-husband with an ophthalmologist, a partner becoming more and more involved in her investigation.

There is an infinite malice in this gesture, that which characterizes the duo formed by Jodie Foster (in her first French film since A Long Engagement Sunday) and Daniel Auteuil, particularly generous, inventive and playful in each of their scenes. Their complicity bursts through the screen.

By Rebecca Zlotowski. With Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira… Duration 1h45. Released November 26, 2025