Jodie Foster speaks French at the 66th Thessaloniki Film Festival with A Private Life
Rebecca Zlotowski directs Jodie Foster in a mystery and psychological drama, where the award-winning actress, as an American psychiatrist, makes her living tracing the most hidden aspects of the human psyche
Newsroom
The 66th Thessaloniki International Film Festival offers audiences a rare opportunity to see the exceptional Jodie Foster performing in her second language — French — according to Proto Thema.
In A Private Life / Vie Privée, directed by Rebecca Zlotowski and featured in the festival’s Open Horizons section, an intense and moving enigma unfolds in the life of Lillian (Jodie Foster), an American psychiatrist who makes her living exploring the most secret corners of the human mind.
“The truest parts of myself I find on screen”
Jodie Foster explained that the title Vie Privée (“Private Life”) was one of the things that attracted her to the script, as she was intrigued by the wordplay between “private life” and “a life deprived.” The film revolves around the ambiguous death of a woman — a story that moved Foster on a personal level.
“I’ve always protected my private life,” she says, “but the truest parts of myself I find on screen.” The Oscar-winning actress emphasized that she has given everything to cinema since she was a child.
The enigma of A Private Life
Is there a greater mystery than the lives of others? That is the question at the heart of the film. When one of Lillian’s patients is found dead, all evidence points to suicide — but could an unconventional method, challenging the old saying ‘don’t air your dirty laundry in public’, lead to different conclusions? And could the audio recordings of Lillian’s sessions contain hidden messages that require another kind of decoding?
By inviting the ever-brilliant Jodie Foster to perform entirely in French (she studied at a French school and often dubs her own films in French), Rebecca Zlotowski unlocks the audience’s subconscious as if guiding them onto a hypnotist’s couch.
Alongside Foster appear a stellar cast representing both the old and new generations of French cinema — Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, and Mathieu Amalric — while legendary observational documentarian Frederick Wiseman makes a surprising appearance in front of the camera for the first time.
“I’ve long wanted to make a French film”
“It’s true that I’ve wanted for a long time to make a French film — with a French director, shot entirely in French, not something that imitates an American production or, even worse, a Franco-American co-production,” Foster said.
“I wanted something simpler, more contemplative, focused on ideas — on the life of the mind. Vie Privée is ambitious. It’s an important film for Rebecca… and for me.”
