Dir: Rebecca Zlotowski, France, 2025, 103 mins, French with subtitles

Cast: Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Almaric

Review by Carol Allen

Jodie Foster, who speaks fluent French and has from childhood, here plays an American psychiatrist Lilian Steiner who is living in France and is shocked when she hears than her client Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efir) has committed suicide with a drug overdose.

Paula’s husband Simon (Mathieu Almaric) blames Paula for over prescribing the medication with which his wife killed herself. But a disturbing visit from Paula’s daughter Valérie (Luàna Bajrami) and a few other odd happenings lead Lilian to suspect that Paula was murdered. So she enlists the help of her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil) who’s an oculist, not a professional ‘tec. Even so the two of them embark on an amateur programme of surveillance and stake-out in the hope of getting at the truth.

The biggest mystery of the film is why Lilian and Gabriel ever parted. They are made for each other. Lilian’s rather brusque manner might give us a clue but the bantering affection between them is a delight, while Auteuil, now unbelievable in his seventies and still dead sexy, very nearly steals the film from Foster.

Another mystery is Lilian’s own mental state. At one point she visits a hypno-therapist who regresses her to what appears to be a past life dream state in which she and Paula are lovers playing in an orchestra in Nazi occupied Paris. One of the Nazi militia Is her estranged son Julien (Vincent Lacoste) while Simon is conducting the orchestra using a revolver as a baton. Wow – send for that nice Sigmund Freud to unravel that lot!

It is however still a very entertaining film and the Foster/Auteuil double act is irresistible.