OI leave Rebecca Zlotowski with an emotionally charged family film – a truly beautiful one Someone else’s child (2022). We find it in a completely different register to the sparkling, suspense-filled film, which harbors Hitchcockian comedic delights and unexpected turns of depth.
In the Personal (in theaters Wednesday, November 26) – which the filmmaker co-wrote with novelist Anne Berest, some of her favorite themes we discover – Jodie Foster is Lilian Steiner, an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst founded in Paris in a luxury practice.
Daily life is peaceful, patients come, and the psychologist listens, expressionless, and not always focused. Until one day Lilian learned of the death of one of her patients, Paula (Virginie Efira), a shock that really shook her.
Suddenly, this woman who was so great at controlling herself lost control. Tears streamed down her face without being able to stop them. A problem that brings her to the office of her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil) – he is an ophthalmologist – and offers her a chance to resume a romantic relationship.
The rational Lilian then consults a hypnotherapist (Sophie Guillemin) to stop her tears and involves Gabriel in the real police investigation. “Making a film of a psychiatrist,” laughs the director, “also satisfies a deep desire, a slightly aggressive and very secret desire to say to oneself: I am better than him. »
The main thing is: Personal it feels like it was tailor-made for Jodie Foster. Is this the problem?
Rebecca Zlotowski: Yes, completely. The writing was attributed to her, this woman, this inspiring actress. Anne Berest and I designed the costume for her. We built the character by thinking about him and I think he recognized himself because he never, at any time, tried to distance himself from what was offered to him.
We know why we’re looking for someone… Jodie Foster accepts this encouragement with compassion. He has perfect control over what he sends back, over the imagination he summons, but he also has a real desire to give himself over to the films he makes. I saw an interview with him not long ago, which I thought was beautiful, in which he ended with this formula: “If you want to know me, look at my films. »
Basically, if we are interested in this topic, it is because the films protect him, he who does not want to sell his privacy at all, and at the same time, it is a way to keep what is most secret, most intimate, most personal in what is most common: a film. We agree with the title idea!
READ ALSO Jodie Foster: “Don’t ban works” When he appeared on the screen, the whole American imagination came with him…
No doubt for this reason, for the first part of the film, I knew that I had to take my time, at least more than I did in my previous films. We just have to say to ourselves: oh yes, there he is, in Paris, who speaks French… We have to give the viewer time to go on this journey.
And then, we move on to this story, and we don’t think about it any more. I find it so beautiful to see him at his age (63, Editor’s Note), letting the camera come to him, completely engaged in the game, in the creation. Rarely do we see actresses express this truth with their faces, with their presence.
This film seems to be full of homages to the feature films you love. We think Mysterious murders in Manhattan (1993) by Woody Allen or even In Pieces (2003) by Jane Campion. Is this desirable?
These are the films I like. in pieces, I haven’t thought about it, it’s completely unconscious. There really is a similar pleasure in entering this genre, between the two Nerves are jittery And feeling dizzythe fun of playing with symbols, the themes of sexuality, the trajectory of a character who believes he has mastered himself and who actually finds himself… And this is a Jane Campion-written film that was made specifically for an actress, Nicole Kidman, even if Meg Ryan ended up playing the role.
Regarding references that I myself admit, there is indeed a Woody Allen film Mysterious murders in Manhattan. This is a masterpiece of trompe-l’oeil filmmaking, because the real subject, at stake in this pairing created by Diane Keaton and Woody Allen, is not who the perpetrator is, but rather: will we survive our son going to college? And then there was Another woman (1988), another Woody Allen film that had a big influence on me, a brilliant film about a woman in control of herself and, nevertheless, faced with the limits of her abilities.
Personal touches on Jewish themes: Lilian is an American Jew faced with the grief of a family that is also Jewish but French…
Lilian has just become a grandmother, her son played by Vincent Lacoste has a baby but she is almost hysterically incapable of conveying tenderness to him. This is the moment when the trauma of the nearly de-Judaizing of American Jews, who did not bear the brunt of the extermination of Jews in Europe, returns in the very strange form of this vanishing patient.
I am really a French woman who is culturally Jewish, not practicing Judaism because I am not a believer, but culturally very Jewish. And there, I wanted the film to reflect Jewish humor, to have the only bright spot in this whole heritage which is humor.
Basically, the story starts like a Jewish joke: a crying psychologist and a former ophthalmologist… Anyway, I love that this film tells us that we cannot escape the trauma of our generation. While I strongly advocate the absence of determinism and absolute freedom to write one’s own story, there comes a time when one must acknowledge what is already there.
You use artificial intelligence for certain scenes that are like visions, awakening the subconscious. What for ?
For dream sequences Doctor Edwards’ HouseHitchcock called Dali. I said to myself: who is Dali today? Who creates images that are so surreal, strange, and incomplete, that they resemble thoughts in a dream or fantasy? This tool scares everyone, but to me, it’s scary if we’re dealing with information, not imagination.
In an article, I discovered a company that allows people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease to create their memories with artificial intelligence. We provide scripts, which use words, and provide images, photos. It’s poetic and sublime, the way it compensates for our failing memory and set me on the path to making these images what they are.
Did you know you have formed an interesting cinema couple by bringing together Daniel Auteuil and Jodie Foster?
If there’s one thing I can say without blushing that works in this film, it’s these two! I didn’t expect the couple to take up so much space, it’s such an important part of a film that wasn’t so much planned in the script, it’s not that kind of remarriage comedy… whereas here, it’s really, really deep.
To find
Kangaroo today
Answer
On the set, fantasy, technique, humor quickly emerged in both of them… And then, it was a meeting Silence of the Lambs AndA heart in winter, they experience it as a challenge, they enjoy each other in the game.
“Personal life”drama by Rebecca Zlotowski (France, 2025), 1 hour 45, with Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira… In cinemas Wednesday 26 November.
