Private Fears in Public Places

A film set in Paris that follows six people. Dan has been thrown out of the army. He drinks all day in a hotel bar and tells his fiancée he is looking for work. Nicole is looking for a flat. The two are to marry but she can see that he is doing nothing. Thierry is an estate agent. Calm, orderly, living with his sister. Charlotte works in the same office. Religious, polite, and in the evenings she looks after an old man. Gaëlle arranges meetings through newspaper advertisements. Each time she sits in a café and the other person does not come. Lionel is the hotel barman. His father is bedridden and he looks after him alone. From there the film ties the six together. Everyone is somebody's relative, colleague or client; but nobody knows what anybody is really living through. What the narrative is interested in is not loneliness but the concealed: every character has a side they tell nobody, and the film shows it only to the audience. Charlotte's line is the most unexpected. The difference between the face she wears at the office and the tape she records at home is the film's most shattering finding. The form is theatrical. Scenes are divided by partitions, transitions between places work like curtains, and the source is a stage play. Snow falls throughout. Outside, on the windows, and even indoors; the narrative does not make it a question of realism. Alain Resnais won the prize for direction at Venice for this film. Sabine Azéma, Laura Morante, Pierre Arditi, André Dussollier and Lambert Wilson are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes character mosaics and theatrical cinema. Who it is not for: anyone looking for movement; the film is almost entirely talk and no line arrives at a conclusion.