I love Jodie Foster, but this was a fairly mediocre psychological detective-type movie. I was impressed that she speaks fluent French throughout the movie. But once the credits rolled, it’s another one of those movies where I’m not exactly sure how to take it. At times, it gives us hints that the story of Lillian Steiner could be further enhanced, but that part ultimately never materializes. Jodie has nice chemistry with her ex-husband, played by Daniel Auteuil, and the duo seems to make a good couple for detective work.

So Lillian plays a psychiatrist who obviously has psychological and emotional issues of her own. This is a common cliché in movies, and it usually is used to help set up the story of the movie. To no one’s surprise, Lillian’s own personal grief and issues have affected her ability to reach a deeper level of understanding with her patients. Basically, she’s not that good at her job. A psychiatrist obviously needs to be adept at listening to her patients and helping to decipher and get to the root of the issue. Therefore, when she finds that one of her patients has died, Lillian begins to see it as more than a suicide but as a murder instead and goes into mystery-solving mode.

So the story does resolve itself nicely at the very end with Lillian making some huge changes such as rearranging her workspace and more importantly, will now start to actually listen and pay more close attention to her patients. Her previous need of wanting to record her sessions so that she can replay them at her leisure was part of the problem and I guess gave her an excuse of not needing to be in the present moment with her patients. In the end, we learn that she’s done away with that habit. I think the one thing I wasn’t quite to sure of was why did her patient, Paula, kill Pearl? Initially we learn from Valerie that it could have been for the inheritance money but her confrontation with Simon towards the end debunked that. Was it because she wanted to “medically assist” in her death since she was old and likely suffering? Did Paula then actually kill herself because of her guilt and the fact that she actually knew that Simon was cheating on her? Jodie Foster is a great actress as usual in A Private Life and made the movie at least worth seeing in my opinion.