In an interview about her new film A Private Life (Vie Privée), Rebecca Zlotowski describes how working with Jodie Foster pushed her to write “freer than ever,” blending Jewish humour, psychological layers, and Hitchcock-like door-slamming suspense—while insis
The first joke comes early, and it’s not there to soothe anyone.
In Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life (Vie Privée). psychiatrist Lilian Steiner—played by Jodie Foster—starts out with a mind that won’t stop picking at connections. While her suspicious theories spiral into a question at the heart of the story—whether her patient. Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira). who committed suicide. was instead murdered first—Lilian keeps colliding with something simpler and louder: the daily life around her. From the opening scene, she clashes with her upstairs neighbour, and the comedy lands as something familiar rather than cruel.
Zlotowski, a French director known for sharply observed psychological dramas, says she felt freer than ever in making this film. She credits not only the chance to work with Jodie Foster—someone she says she’s wanted to collaborate with for years—but also a writing process that let her “have it all. ” without locking herself into one strict genre shape.
“In writing this film. I allowed myself to delve into those places I would organically go. ” Zlotowski says. explaining that she didn’t treat it as a thriller. a relationship-centred comedy. a psychological drama or a murder mystery. “Instead. I could have it all if I wanted to.” She adds that Foster was “super-happy” with that approach. and that she felt “we were on the same page.”.
She also links her creative momentum to therapy. describing how she began therapy five years ago and says she has now stopped. In her last session. she recounts. “the ceiling literally collapsed.” She says it happened after the shooting had finished. and that she thought. “Fuck. I could have put that in the film.”.
That mixture of personal urgency and genre play shows up in the film’s emotional mechanics. Lilian is introduced as someone who behaves badly—Zlotowski calls her “this really bad therapist. cockblocker. and bad mom”—and yet the laughter makes it possible to stay close to her. Zlotowski compares the film’s humour to Jewish jokes. saying the point isn’t just to laugh at something outsiders don’t “get.” In Jewish humour. she explains. the joke works like an instruction: “And now you’re supposed to laugh. You either understand it or you don’t.” For her. the audience’s connection to Lilian is what turns the punchline into recognition.
Paul Risker presses her on whether the film expects viewers to like Lilian. Zlotowski answers by leaning into transformation rather than comfort. She frames it as a character arc built for an actress like Foster. who she describes as “encapsulating Hollywood itself.” In the beginning. Lilian is a professional who’s failing—by the end. Zlotowski says. she is “a better therapist.” That’s the arc. and Zlotowski argues it matters even when the underlying plot is “simple.”.
The story’s engine is the suspicion Lilian forms around Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira). whose suicide becomes the question Lilian can’t let go of. Lilian’s theory unfolds through her patient’s death and through the people around it: Valérie (Luana Bajrami). described as Paula’s daughter. and Simon (Mathieu Amalric). Paula’s husband. Lilian drags her ex-husband. Gabriel Haddad (Daniel Auteuil). into her “wild journey. ” and the trip becomes. as Zlotowski puts it through the film’s structure and her own description of what matters to audiences. an opportunity for the two to rekindle their relationship.
Zlotowski’s film instincts are also visible in how she talks about cinematic lineage. Risker describes A Private Life as having Hitchcockian vibes. and Zlotowski doesn’t dismiss the comparison—she says she wasn’t sure she “pulled it off. ” but thanks him for the read. She also says the film is Fritz Lang-ish and connects it to 1940s cinema. naming films including Nightmare Alley and Spellbound.
She ties that old-school influence to the time when psychoanalysis felt “fresh. ” a new field filled with symbols and semiotics. which she says helped enable collaborations like those seen in Spellbound and with the work of [Salvador] Dalí. Her challenge. she adds. was building the “inner life” of characters’ past lives—making the film “cinematic” while creating its unconscious.
Zlotowski also reaches toward directors who live closer to dream logic: she calls the film “Lynchian or Felini-esque. ” saying those are masters she’s always thinking about and that inspire her. But again she returns to Hitchcock as the more accurate reference—not just for mood. but for method: she describes it as a “playground” where you can open and close doors. a technique she says Hitchcock loved and used in his thrillers.
If some viewers find A Private Life confusing. Zlotowski argues the confusion is part of the transaction between filmmaker and audience. She doesn’t treat the layering as a mistake. “The asperity of a film is the reason why sometimes it’s confusing. ” she says. adding that it can sometimes be confusing just because it’s new—though she doesn’t think the film is new. Her framing is that it’s “free.”.
She points to Paul Thomas Anderson as an example of films where you may not immediately know what you’re looking at. but where the characters and the movement through scenes still hold. She says A Private Life isn’t parody or satire, not sentimental and not a biopic. Instead, it’s about “organically flowing characters.”.
Then she makes a direct promise about structure: in the beginning, the film asks whether Paula Cohen-Solal was murdered or whether she killed herself. Zlotowski says she “promised there would be an answer,” and that viewers “get one.”
For those who might not be sure what to do with the multiple layers, she says even the people who appear confused are happy to see Daniel Auteuil and Jodie Foster play an ex-couple. She calls their on-screen chemistry an “instant classic.”
There’s a tenderness in that, but it’s built from craft. Zlotowski suggests that audiences warm to Lilian because she’s “loved by this man. ” and she argues Gabriel Haddad adds warmth—Daniel Auteuil’s character comes from the south of France. she says. and “there is something warmer about him.” She also describes Auteuil as a legend who can play both drama and comedy. including the kind of rhythm comedy requires while diving into “a very French type of sentimentality.” She highlights a rainy-car moment where he asks her for a cigarette and urges them to talk about their separation. calling it “such a French scene.”.
By the end, Zlotowski returns to the question of what the audience is meant to bring. She says she trusts viewers because “we have reached a point where the audience are narrative-literate.” Viewers. she argues. know enough to follow the film’s pattern: open the doors if that’s what you want. or don’t. If you want to watch it as a murder mystery. you can; if you want the marriage-centred comedy. or the Jewish psychological drama. you can choose that way in. She offers the film, she says, and you connect to one part or not. “And by the end, the journey has been a good one.”.
Zlotowski’s broader work sits behind those choices. She remembers making her feature debut with Belle Épine. about a drug and alcohol-fuelled friendship between two girls after falling into trouble with the law. Her sophomore feature Grand Central is set at a nuclear power plant in the French Rhone Valley and tells the story of an adulterous affair between a new employee and the fiancée of his supervisor. She has also directed Planetarium. starring Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp. the coming of age drama An Easy Girl (Une Fille Facile). and the romantic drama Other People’s Children (Les Enfants Des Autres).
In discussing her creative voice, she doesn’t present it as a tidy evolution. She calls herself obsessive and says she feels like she makes “the same film” each time. even though it looks different. She cites her admiration for Sidney Lumet. and contrasts his approach—reading through scripts repeatedly. then making the film—against her own method. which she describes as writing to “find the story.” She adds that even with many of the same collaborators. the films eventually look different. embrace different genres. and that variety is healthy.
Age, she says, has shifted her material: she’s “not getting younger,” her characters are older, and they are moms now with new obsessions, fears and desires. She also points to a quote she attributes to Jane Fonda: it’s not about being an interesting person, but about staying interested in things.
A Private Life is in UK cinemas on Friday 26 June.
A Private Life Vie Privée Rebecca Zlotowski Jodie Foster Daniel Auteuil Virginie Efira Mathieu Amalric Luana Bajrami Lilian Steiner Paula Cohen-Solal Gabriel Haddad Hitchcock Fritz Lang Jewish humour therapy UK cinemas 26 June