Dallas Film Now.

Daniel Auteuil, Vincent Lacoste, Virginie Efira, and Mathieu Amalric also star in director Rebecca Zlotowski’s drama, shrouded in mystery. 

Quelle idée! Yes, Jodie Foster, who has been fluent in the language since the age of 14,  speaks French in her role as Dr. Lilian Steiner, a psychiatrist living in Paris. 

Initially, Lilian is presented as someone who is worn out by her patients. First, a longtime patient barges in and informs her that he has been cured of his lifelong smoking addiction by a hypnotist in a single session. And he refuses to pay! 

Next, Lilian learns that another longtime patient, Paula (Virginie Efira), has died. It’s only when Lilian arrives at the funeral that she learns that Paula committed suicide and her husband, Simon (Mathieu Amalric), is outraged by her presence, blaming her for his wife’s death. Even so, Lilian does not appear overly disturbed, and carries on. 

It’s not long, though, before Lilian finds tears flowing from her eyes, uncontrollably, prompting her to visit her ex-husband, Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), an ophthalmologist; he is not able to offer her solution, but their reunion hints at the film’s primary interest: not the woman who died, and not who may have been responsible, but Lillian herself, and how she has dealt with her past. 

Director Rebecca Zlotowski, who wrote the script with Anne Berest, and in collaboration with Gaelle Mace, cloaks the personal drama with a murder mystery, as Lilian becomes convinced that Paula did not kill herself but, instead, was murdered. Under that guise, she begins to reconcile with ex-husband Gabriel and tries to repair her fragile relationship with their son, Julien (Vincent Lacoste), who is married to Vanessa (Park Ji-min), with whom he has a newborn child. 

Over the course of the film, Lilian’s family drama becomes of greater importance, as it becomes clear that she has been hiding from events that occurred in the past, and has, in fact, never dealt with the issues that led to her divorce from Gabriel and the rather icy strains on her relationship with Julien, who harbors ill will toward her. 

The details of the mystery are muffled and never become sufficiently intriguing or compelling to solve on their own. Yet it’s the family drama, together with Jodie Foster’s strong, confident performance, shifting easily through moods from indifference to confusion to anxiety to despair to anguish, that makes the movie rise above expectations. 

The film opens Friday, January 30, in select area theaters. For locations and showtimes, visit the official site.