A Private Life is a 2025 French comic mystery thriller, directed by Rebecca Zlotowski, who co-wrote the screenplay with Anne Berest and Gaëlle Macé. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025 but was not released in the UK until last Friday, 26 June, 2026.

Dr. Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster) is a Jewish-American psychiatrist, working from her Paris home. The film focuses on two of her patients: Paula (Virginie Efira) who we see only in flashback, as she has (apparently) committed suicide immediately prior to the beginning of the film, using pills prescribed by Dr Steiner; and Pierre (Noam Morgensztern) who after ten years of sessions with Dr Steiner trying to quit smoking, has moved to another psychiatrist and managed to quit after just one session. So, Paula’s husband (Mathieu Amalric) and Pierre both have professional issues with Dr Steiner.

However, she gets it into her head that there is something not quite right about Paula’s death – perhaps it was murder (shock, horror). With the assistance of her ex-husband (Daniel Auteuil) she sets about trying to prove her theory, and as she does so events start happening (her car is vandalised, her flat is burgled) which lead her to think that she must be right.

I must come clean and confess that I added the word ‘comic’ into the above description: Wikipedia had it down as a mystery thriller. However, it is definitely comic; it is darkly comic. Because if you take this too seriously it is so full of plot holes that it will drive you to distraction. It is also quite confused and would have been better with some of the loose ends either being followed through to some kind of conclusion or being eliminated altogether.

There are some really good things about this film: Jodie Foster proves that she can act just as well in French as she can in English; and Daniel Auteuil is excellent, but then he generally is. So, what went wrong? To begin with, I had been looking forward to seeing this film since I first heard about it some fourteen months ago, so my expectations were high; secondly, I was told by Wikipedia that it is a mystery thriller (not a comedy). So perhaps the problem I had with it was partly that my own expectations of the film were inappropriate to the film I saw. However, on balance it is too confused and at times very silly. The plot needs to be at some level credible, and it just isn’t.

A Private Life is worth seeing if you are a bit of a ‘collector’ and want to see Jodie Foster speaking fluent French in her first French film. However, it is not a good enough film otherwise, so I cannot honestly recommend it.