PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES (Coeurs)
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
IFC First Take
Grade: B+
Directed by: Alain Resnais
Written By: Jean-Michel Ribes, from Alain Ayckbourn's play "Private Fears in Public Places"
Cast: Laura Morante, Lambert Wilson, Pierre Arditi, Isabelle Carre, Claude Rich, Andre Dussollier, Sabine Azema
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 4/9/07
Opens: April 13, 2007
Some walls are good to have while others are not. In the former category, think of Thomas Jefferson's
comment on the wall between church and state that "must be kept high and impregnable," and F.D.R.'s
comment that "Good fences make good neighbors." On the other hand, we're reminded of the Gipper's
resonant plea to the former Soviet leader, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." In the metaphoric area
of human relations, sometimes high walls make good neighbors, but in many cases they are obstacles that enforce terrible, unnecessary loneliness. This last point is brought out to an emotionally-draining degree by Alain Resnais in adapting the English writer Alan Ayckbourn's play, "Private Fears in Public Places."
If the name Resnais strikes fears into your heart, there are two reasons: “Hiroshima mon amour,” and “Last Year at Marienbad.” If, like me, you’ve spent the last forty-six years trying to make heads or tails of the latter film in which characters played by Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig claim they’d had an affair “last year at Frederiksbad or perhaps at Marienbad,” and if you assume that as artists get older they become, like Picasso, ever more abstract, fear no more. “Private Fears,” called “Coeurs,” in the French title, is readily parsed. Don’t worry if you’re not in your forties or sixties like most of the characters herein. If you’re a young ‘un and have had a series of unsuccessful dates, blind or otherwise, and have gone home lonelier than when you’re started out, you’ll know how the men and women in Ayckbourn’s play, and hence Resnais’ film, feel. Cliche though it may be, your coeur will go out to them.
The eighty-four-year old regisseur unfolds the drama as a series of some fifty scenes, in several cases using physical walls as metaphors for the separations that keep his character lonely. The most apt of these occurs when Nicole (Maura Morante) looks for an apartment to share with her fiancé, Dan (Lambert Wilson), but tells her real estate agent Thierry (Andre Dussolier) that the place, though in a desirable part of the city, has been split in half. Even the bedroom window has been cut, leaving one part in the living room, the other in the bedroom, by an avaricious landlord, symbolizing the separateness she is later to feel with her lover. For his part, Thierry, in love with his office assistant, Charlotte (Sabine Azema), has virtually given up hope, as she is a religious woman who gives him videotapes of people who are turned on by songs such as Ave Maria; but later segments of her tapes afford him new confidence and provide one of the great comic twists and treats of the picture.
Loneliness can cause such desperation that Nicole, a good-looking woman, puts up for quite a long time with an alcoholic, lazy, unemployed fiancé, Dan, who gets cheap therapy with Lionel (Pierre Arditi), who bartends in a chic hotel and serves as caretaker to a cantakerous, dying father at home. But both Dan and Lionel are to get second chances, Dan with a beautiful but shy woman, Gaelle (Isabelle Carre), the much younger sister of Thierry, whom Dan meets as a blind date after a falling out with his fiancé.
Though “Private Fears in Public Places” give the impression of a Robert Altman movie, of a large number of people somehow managing to meet up by the conclusion, it is happily a more intimate story involving a small group of characters all of whom we get to know well and root for. We accept their limitations, we root for them (well, maybe not for Lionel’s crusty dad, whom we never actually see), and I’ll bet we can all identify with some of their weaknesses and foibles. The entire picture is nicely photographed by Eric Gautier, the endless snow giving the feeling that we’re looking at one of those musical snow globes that run on AA batteries that people give as Christmas gifts. “Private Fears in Public Places” evokes a combination of Gallic charm and English bourgeois panache–sad, funny, and charming.
Not Rated. 123 minutes © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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