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PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES
Directed by: Alain Resnais.
Produced by: Bruno Pésery.
Written (in French, with English subtitles) by: Jean-Michel Ribes, based on the play by Alan Ayckbourn.
Director of Photography: Eric Gautier.
Edited by: Hervé de Luze.
Music by: Mark Snow.
Released by IFC First Take.
Country of Origin: France. 120 min. Not Rated.
With: Sabine Azéma, Isabelle Carré, Laura Morante, Pierre Arditi, André Dussollier, Claude Rich & Lambert Wilson.

French stalwart Alain Resnais, now age 84, blended musical snippets with the boulevard comedy (years before Baz Luhrmann) in Same Old Song (1997) and resuscitated a creaky 1920s French operetta for Not on the Lips (2003). He now turns to prolific British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, producing perhaps his most empathetic film. (Resnais previously adapted Ayckbourn for Smoking/No Smoking in 1993.) While the viewer was constantly aware of the contrast of the drama and the abrupt musical numbers in his last two films, here the artifice is one and the same. From the opening miniature set of Paris shrouded in snow to a cozy bistro with a constant deluge of huge snowflakes outside, the city has hardly looked better on a sound stage. (Filmed with soft light, dare I say cheesecloth, the all-star European cast looks glowingly youthful.)

In fact, Private Fears in Public Places is startlingly if you’ve recently seen Resnais’ Muriel from 1963, newly out on DVD, a fascinating and intricate piece of filmmaking with jumbled and elliptical storylines but a cast that, at times, gets lost amid all the frenetic jump cuts. In Private Fears, sedate in comparison, the playing field is leveled. There’s no detachment between the characters and the director’s self-conscious editing. Filmed in widescreen, rarely do more than one or two dominate the screen. The intimate and measured tone carries on through out, and unlike the cast of Not on the Lips, which largely seemed restrained even in the lighthearted musical numbers, Private Fears’ lonely hearts let themselves go with more abandonment, though never overwhelmed by hopes of love or lust. However, without the zippy pacing and hyper characterizations of most of Ayckbourn’s farces, Private Fears plays more like a pensive comedy of manners than a knockabout cartoon.

Thierry (André Dussollier) and Charlotte (Sabine Azéma) have worked side by side in a real estate office for years and yet hardly know each other. An avowed Christian, she can hardly contain her enthusiasm when she loans Thierry a video of her favorite inspirational TV program. At home alone, he duly watches it. His considerably younger sister and roommate, Gaëlle (the delicate Isabelle Carré), has gone out for the evening, telling him she’s out with the girls when she’s really meeting a blind date. Thierry, having finished viewing the tape, is about to turn it off, when suddenly what looks like homemade footage appears – a woman seen from the neck down, dressed in fishnet stockings and a black teddy writhing to music. Is it his colleague, dowdy Charlotte?

Meanwhile, Charlotte works as a caretaker after office hours for an ornery and demeaning elderly man, while his son, Lionel (Pierre Arditi), serves drinks at a hip hotel bar, where he’s on a first name basis with day-to-night boozer Dan, recently kicked out of the army and now unemployed, leaving his fiancée, Nicole (Laura Morante), to look for new accommodations with their broker, Thierry. A particularly heartfelt moments involves leading man Lambert Wilson as Dan. Complemented for his good looks, Dan blushes, the first time in long a time I’ve seen a male movie star get red in the face.

Despite the interconnections, not all strings are tied, and some are severed. Despite the glossy look, don’t look for Hollywood endings. In fact, the understated brooding brings out some of the darkness inherit in Ayckbourn’s material, though without the playwright’s biting one-liners. The humor translates as more situational, though one could almost hear the British inflection while reading the subtitles. Kent Turner
April 13, 2007