If that shows just how dedicated the 62-year-old Foster is as an actress – she’s been in the business for more than five decades – it comes as no surprise. She’s wanted to do another French-speaking role for years, and Zlotowski was left staggered by Foster’s linguistic skills on set. “You see the level of perfectionism that Jodie has. Honestly, it was flawless. We even needed to add some curses and stuff, in post-prod, because it would be too French!”
As Lilian barrels around Paris, like an amateur sleuth, it’s easy to see why Foster responded to playing the character. With a whiff of Hitchcockian wit, not to mention a dash of Only Murders In The Building, the story unfolds when one of Steiner’s patients commits suicide – overdosing on antidepressants. Clashing with the patient’s widowed husband (Mathieu Amalric), Steiner comes to believe this is no simple open-and-shut case.
Intriguingly, Lilian’s identity is very tied to her Jewishness, something that Zlotowski felt compelled to explore. “It’s something I can’t escape. I mean, I don’t want to write about it. Definitely not. But I would say it’s like my female gaze. I have a Jewish gaze, I have a Rebecca gaze, I have a French gaze. And I would say that Judaism as a culture – not as a religion, because I’m not a religious person, even like a believer – but the Jewish culture is pretty rich.”
Raised in France, of Polish-Moroccan descent, her father, Michel Zlotowski, is an English-French interpreter, while her Moroccan mother teaches Spanish. “This is the culture I was born in. It’s like literature, humour and, of course, there are also certain traumatic parts,” she says. “I mean, as a French woman from Jewish culture, it’s something that is connected to my family, but also a very interesting playground. It is very interesting narratively.”
Certainly, the film is rich in Jewish humour – the Jewish jokes that Zlotowski mentions. “I mean, I wish I had more,” she says. “I feel like the plot, the starting point, is like a Jewish joke,” she adds, noting how Lilian is always crying in the therapy sessions she conducts (and, bizarrely, records them onto MiniDisc). “A psychiatrist that sobs when your patients tell the stories… I think that every patient wants to make their therapist cry. It’s like a win! It would be deal breaker for a Freudian!”
The film also delves into the Jewish folklore concept of dybbuk – a malicious spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. “I totally connect with the fact that a film should ask questions and not deliver answers,” says Zlotwoski, who appears entranced by the spiritualism of the movie. “I find it pretty cinematic in a way, because it’s just like you open doors and the film asks the questions and the audience can open or not, this door.” Bolstering the film’s Jewish credentials, she also cast Frederick Wiseman in a key role. The famed Jewish documentary maker – whose observational films include National Gallery and City Hall – is now 95 years old but was game to act on screen (as he did in Zlotowski’s last film, fertility drama Other People’s Children). “I think he wanted to be invisible in his films, for so many years. He invented the grammar of documentaries, to be invisible, and now he’s just happy to be on screen.”
One of the more unique aspects of A Private Life comes when Lilian agrees to undergo hypnosis and, through past-life regression, it appears she may have encountered her late patient in another life. Zlotowski partly created the dream sequences using AI technology.
While there is a lot of fear in Hollywood about AI, she makes no apologies for using it, citing Alfred Hitchcock, who hired surrealist artist Salvador Dalí to create the dream sequence for 1945’s Spellbound. “He had this tool. We have other ones,” she shrugs. Despite being 45, and not raised in the digital age, Zlotowski is enthusiastic about it. “It’s just a tool that is super interesting to work with because it’s eventually going to be our future.” She calls it an “anthropological revolution”, a tech marvel that “comes from words”. “I scripted ideas that became images, put them on this very huge, virtual set. And eventually it became super interesting, because it creates things.”
Right now, Zlotowski is back working in a more traditional medium, shooting a television series that she co-wrote. It’s not her first – she did 2019’s Savages, a fiction that focused on the first Maghrebi to be elected president of France. This latest effort sounds a world away. “I love fashion. And this is a TV show about a young stylist in Paris. It’s pretty campy!” she explains. “I’m just diving into this more humoristic aspects of my personality.” More Jewish jokes? Don’t bet against it.
A Private Life screens at the Jewish Film Festival on November 13. To book tickets, visit www.ukjewishfilm.org
Director Rebecca ZlotowskiGetty Images for FLC