A Private Life is the kind of flimsy genre exercise that needs a strong star performance to keep it on course. Thankfully, Rebecca Zlotowski has cast Jodie Foster at the centre of the film, and it’s hard to imagine a stronger linchpin. Foster plays Lilian Steiner, an American psychiatrist living in Paris who, we quickly surmise. has been doing this work for a long time. perhaps too long. She barely seems to listen to her patients’ woes, allowing her ever-present Dictaphone to do the work for her, and her emotions are regimented to such a degree that she is brusque and distant even around her own family.
