‘A Non-public Life’ overview: Therapist Jodie Foster wades into foul play

Jodie Foster is such a reliable actor, so clever about her credibility, that she will lead a patchwork French mystery-drama like “A Non-public Life” — which boasts the Academy Award winner’s Franco-fluency — as if it have been concurrently a wink at her celeb, an ideal showcase for her expertise and a good-looking mess lucky to have her imprimatur. In a approach that makes her a perfect French film star: a particular model of excessive wattage (Deneuve, Huppert, Binoche) that imbues simply the correct quantity of sophistication to an undercooked piece of grownup peekaboo, whereas nonetheless burnishing the actor’s popularity.

Filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski, whose final movie was the heartfelt, sophisticated “Different Folks’s Kids,” does effectively to forged Foster as American-born, Paris-based psychiatrist Lilian Steiner. It isn’t lengthy after assembly Lilian in her well-appointed condominium/workplace, alone on a wet evening, bristling at her upstairs neighbors’ loud music and leaving a brusque voicemail for an absentee affected person, that we sense this control-minded skilled is in for some destabilizing. And understanding that is in Foster’s palms comes as near a assure of high quality as a film can provide.

The swerve comes when Lilian learns that the absentee shopper — a good looking, troubled girl named Paula (Virginie Efira, seen in flashbacks) — died out of the blue. After being thrown out of the household’s shiva by widower Simon (Mathieu Amalric), however clinging to cryptic messages from the daughter (Luana Bajrami), Lilian suspects foul play slightly than the official ruling of suicide. She even wrangles her affable ex-husband, Gaby (Daniel Auteuil), an eye fixed physician she’s nonetheless on good phrases with, for investigative assist.

It’s debatable, nonetheless, whether or not Lilian is on to one thing or simply scrambling to make sense of a tragedy to assuage her personal guilt, a query that rattles in our ears with each campy symphonic flourish or percussive ornamentation within the aggressive musical rating. Zlotowski, working once more with co-screenwriter Anne Berest and ultra-capable cinematographer George Lechaptois, doesn’t go for half-measures, so when Lilian units apart her skepticism to look into issues with a suspicious hypnotist, it comes full with a red-hued Freudian dream sequence that convinces this tightly wound, coldly reasoned physician to imagine within the florid logic of previous lives. It’s a change that comes as a shock to her grown son (a wry Vincent Lacoste) who’s at all times needed to accommodate a fastidiously distanced mother.

As “A Non-public Life” strikes alongside, with Lilian negotiating a break-in, threats and lapses in judgment, it by no means precisely coheres. But it in some way entertains, which is a testomony to Zlotowski’s power juggling her numerous theme-colored story balls. Whereas the thriller plot strains to be attention-grabbing as a lesson for its protagonist about how one by no means can totally know one other human being, Lilian’s and Gaby’s rekindled affection is a splendidly mature strand of midlife complexity, with Auteuil and Foster giving all their scenes the type of nuanced, lived-in humor that implies a flinty couple who by no means totally believed they have been completed with one another.

The slouchless forged additionally contains icons Irène Jacob and Aurore Clément, “Return to Seoul” breakout Park Ji-Min and documentary legend Frederick Wiseman (as Lilian’s mentor), however all in bits that vary from stunty to blink-and-you’ll-miss-them. Once more, the celebration looks as if it was enjoyable, and Foster attracts a deserving cohort for her first all-French-speaking position since 2004’s “A Very Lengthy Engagement.” But it surely additionally leaves one realizing that “A Non-public Life,” regardless of the commanding main girl holding its heart, is a bit blended up by design.