Dir. Alain Resnais, France/Italy, 2006, Year, 120 mins (French with subtitles)
Cast: Laura Morante, Pierre Arditi, Lambert Wilson
Review by Carol Allen
Playwright Alan Ayckbourn and director Alain Resnais combined forces several years ago in a two film version of Ayckbourn's play cycle "Smoking, No Smoking", retaining its Yorkshire setting and characters even though they were all speaking in French! In Resnais's new film of Ayckbourn's "Private Fears in Public Places" he is faithful to the play with its complex Ayckbournian structure of six characters, plus one heard as an off screen voice only, whose lives and stories interweave in a series of short but telling scenes, but has reset it quite comfortably in Paris - a wintry Paris in which snow is constantly falling.
It's a six characters in search of human connection plot. Nicole (Morante) is living in a state of unresolved frustration with her unemployed, heavy drinking fiancé Dan ( Wilson ), who has been discharged from the army for some unspecified disgrace. While Dan pours out his troubles to Lionel (Arditi), barman at his favourite watering hole, Nicole trails round the fashionable Bercy area with estate agent Thierry (André Dussollier) looking for an apartment with the separate study that her workshy fiancé insists on. Thierry lives with his sister Gaelle (Isabelle Carré), who haunts sleazy cafés looking in vain for Monsieur Right, while Thierry nurses a secret passion for his fiercely Christian secretary Charlotte (Sabine Azéma), who lends him videos of her favourite religious programme, which have a surprising saucy secret tacked on the end after the God spot. Meanwhile Charlotte acts as a volunteer carer for Lionel's bedridden, foul mouthed and abusive father Arthur (Claude Riche), present only as an off screen voice and who is despite his invisibility to us the person, who seems to have the most vigorous hold on life out of all of them. As these characters' lives collide and slide by each other in a series of short scenes, Ayckbourn's pointed dialogue, faithfully translated by French playwright Jean-Michel Ribes, creates a rather bleak and lonely world, reflected by the constantly falling snow outside, of people trying and largely failing to break out of their isolation and connect with each other.
Although not without its comic moments, this piece is nowhere near as funny as a lot of the playwright's other work. It is, however, well acted by a first rate cast and very poignant in its observation of the frequently isolated nature of the human condition.
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