A Private Life stars Jodie Foster in a French film about an expat American psychiatrist working in Paris. It’s mostly in French except for a return to English when the occasion demands a curse word.

A Private Life is part mystery and part psychological drama around grieving and family. Rebecca Zlotowski directed.

Lilian (Jodie Foster) lives alone. She sees patients in her apartment. She’s divorced from her French husband, Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil). Their son Julien (Vincent Lacoste) is barely in her life and she refuses to even pick up her new grandchild. She’s all hard edges, work, and loneliness.

Two of her patients manage to upset her entire world. Pierre (Noam Morgensztern) has been coming to her for years. He originally began with her because he wanted to quit smoking. Now he says a hypnotist finally helped him quit smoking and he’s finished with Lilian. In fact, he wants all the money back he spent on sessions with her.

The other upset is Lilian’s patient Paula (Virginie Efira). She apparently commits suicide. Lilian didn’t see this coming at all. It grieves her mightily and tears flow steadily from her eyes, even though she isn’t crying.

Lilian has angry confrontations with Paula’s daughter Valérie (Luàna Bajrami) and husband Simon (Mathieu Amalric). Valérie shows Lilian a paper that mentions a prescription Lilian gave Paula. The drugs were apparently used in the death of Paula’s aunt and Paula herself.

Lilian suspects first the daughter and then the husband of killing Paula and her aunt for money. She enlists the help of her ex, Gabriel. Handy since he’s an eye doctor and she can’t stop the tears from falling.

Gabriel can’t stop the tears either, but he agrees to help her solve the mystery of what happened to Paula.

Lilian decides to try the hypnotist (Sophie Guillemin) to stop the tears. The hypnotist does manage to dry the tears, but she also leads Lilian on a past life regression that makes Lilian believe she was a cellist in Germany during world war 2 and Paula was her pregnant wife. Her son was a German officer and Paula’s husband was the conductor with a gun aimed at Paula.

Lilian embraces this hypnotic vision and confronts her family with it like it explains everything. It doesn’t, but it breaks loose something that was keeping Lilian dammed up and frees her in her relationship with them. It’s ironic and clever that the well-known psychiatrist goes to a nobody hypnotist to break loose from her own demons.

The mystery of Paula’s death becomes clearer after Lilian notices a discrepancy in the note about the medicine she prescribed. Another confrontation with Paula’s angry husband helps break Lilian loose in other ways, too.

Jodie Foster was fabulous in this. She’s so good she can make you believe anything the script demands. And in French. I would have loved to see more of Virginie Efira, but she was not in many scenes and much of the time she was shown from Lilian’s viewpoint in ways that obscured her. An interesting metaphor from the director for keeping her unknown by Lilian.

It’s worth watching the trailer if you haven’t seen it yet. The film is available on Prime Video now, but for a rental fee. I obviously thought it was worth the cost, but you could add it to your watch list for later when it’s free with a subscription.