Private Fears In Public Places

A likeable real-estate agent (Andre Dussollier) keeps trying to sell apartments to a baleful wife (Laura Morante). Her decidedly unsatisfactory husband (Wilson) is the resident barfly at a gauche Parisian joint tended by the tolerant Pierre Arditi. Back at the real-estate agent’s office, his religiously minded co-worker (Sabine Azema) gives him videotapes of an evangelical television programme with secret saucy footage hidden after the credits.
She takes a job looking after a high maintenance geriatric, who happens to be the father of the bartender. His most regular customer places a personal ad that attracts the younger sister (Carre) of the estate agent… And round and round we go.
Elderly directors Having Another Go is not always a pretty sight. Nic Roeg’s Puffball, made when that once vibrant filmmaker was 78, is not simply a dreadful film but a genuinely tragic occasion. M. Resnais, however, can still fashion a daisy-chain to make Crash look like a pile of puke. It may not rank alongside Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year At Marienbad, Stavisky, Je T’aime, Je T’aime or the great master’s best works, but Private Fears In Public Places sees the 85-year-old in fine form. The drama, adapted from the Alan Ayckbourn play of the same name, is never less than compelling, and the visuals – snow falling indoors, misty lights – are tres bien. Dry ice hasn’t looked this good since the ‘70s.