Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

34 10,000 B.C.
48 21
47 27 Dresses
17 88 Minutes
39 Alvin and the Chipmunks
55 Baby Mama
69 Bank Job, The
52 Be Kind Rewind
42 Bucket List, The
54 Charlie Bartlett
36 College Road Trip
31 Deception
51 Doomsday
41 Drillbit Taylor
29 Fool's Gold
57 Forbidden Kingdom, The
67 Forgetting Sarah Marshall
59 Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour
57 Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
71 Horton Hears a Who!
63 How She Move
78 Iron Man
35 Jumper
81 Juno
56 Leatherheads
41 Mad Money
37 Made of Honor
9 Meet the Spartans
48 National Treasure: Book of Secrets
39 Never Back Down
55 Nim's Island
50 Other Boleyn Girl, The
xx Rogue
44 Ruins, The
47 Semi-Pro
76 Shine a Light
37 Shutter
57 Smart People
37 Speed Racer
62 Spiderwick Chronicles, The
50 Step Up 2 the Streets
61 Stop Loss
55 Street Kings
33 Superhero Movie
92 There Will Be Blood
45 Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns
40 Vantage Point
36 What Happens in Vegas...

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
83 Alexandra
43 Anamorph
35 Babysitters, The
32 Backseat
80 Band's Visit, The
62 Battle for Haditha
47 Bella
63 Blind Mountain
71 Blindsight
47 Boarding Gate
63 Body of War
58 Bra Boys
70 Caramel
54 Cashback
44 Chaos Theory
32 Chapter 27
69 Chicago 10
82 Chop Shop
46 CJ7
78 Counterfeiters, The
30 Cover
48 Dark Matter
35 Deal
61 Dhamma Brothers, The
92 Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
20 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
58 Fall, The
43 Favor, The
58 First Saturday in May, The
57 Flawless
87 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
xx From Within
44 Frontier(s)
59 Fugitive Pieces
41 Funny Games
66 George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
61 Girls Rock!
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
57 Grand, The
58 Hats Off
68 Honeydripper
xx Jack and Jill vs. the World
67 Jellyfish
xx Kiss the Bride
37 Life Before Her Eyes, The
72 Life of Reilly, The
50 Look
65 Married Life
35 Meet Bill
63 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
54 Mister Lonely
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
52 Noise
61 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
55 Pathology
48 Penelope
90 Persepolis
62 Planet B-Boy
xx Plumm Summer, A
67 Praying with Lior
46 Previous Engagement, A
72 Priceless
17 Prom Night
69 Redbelt
72 Roman de gare
48 Run, Fat Boy, Run
85 Savages, The
24 Sex and Death 101
66 Shelter
75 Shotgun Stories
40 Sleepwalking
67 Snow Angels
64 Son of Rambow
71 Standard Operating Procedure
76 Stuff and Dough
64 Surfwise
xx Tashan
82 Taxi to the Dark Side
57 Teeth
56 Then She Found Me
55 Tracey Fragments, The
56 Turn the River
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
59 Under the Same Moon
76 Unforeseen, The
xx Unsettled
91 Up the Yangtze
55 Vice
79 Visitor, The
64 Water Lilies
45 Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
57 Without the King
74 Witnesses, The
63 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart
45 Zombie Strippers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Private Fears in Public Places
IFC First Take


10.0

based on 18 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 1 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Sabine Azéma, Lambert Wilson, André Dussollier, Pierre Arditi, Laura Morante, and Isabelle Carré

Six people collide and influence each other's lives in significant ways as they navigate the cold winter months in Paris. (IFC Films)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Foreign
WRITTEN BY:	Jean-Michel Ribes Alan Ayckbourn (play)
DIRECTED BY:	Alain Resnais
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: April 13, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	120 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	France / Italy
LANGUAGE(S):	French (with English subtitles)

Original titles "Coeurs"; Nominated, Golden Lion, 2006 Venice Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Alain Resnais' 2006 adaptation of a British play by Alan Ayckbourn is a world apart from his earlier Ayckbourn adaptation, "Smoking/No Smoking"; that film tried to be as "English" as possible. But this time Resnais looks for precise French equivalents to British culture, and what emerges is one of his most personal works, intermittently recalling the melancholy "Muriel" and "Providence."

100

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Resnais employs all the tools of studio-bound moviemaking, silent-era to post-modern, in a way that is not only is consistently dazzling in a purely visual sense, but contains an empathy that lifts the picture to tragic heights even at those points at which it seems practically weightless.

100

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A masterpiece by any measure, is fresh, immediate and contemporary, but its wintry yet warm perspective is suffused with the wisdom and experience of a great filmmaker who turns 85 on June 2.

100

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The cast is tremendous; these actors work with Resnais like a well-oiled stock company that knows every trick and can communicate almost telepathically.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

It's a Parisian romantic roundelay with sundry couples connecting and disconnecting, but it looks and sounds like no sex comedy ever made: It's transcendentally yummy.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Resnais and Ayckbourn care primarily about observing these characters' private and public faces, who they are and who they present themselves as. To that end, they've achieved a mood of enchanting intimacy.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The grand old filmmaker frames each scene like a fine painting. And fake snow falls with happy artificiality between rueful vignettes.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

The film is accessible, pleasant, dreamy, a touch goofy and melancholic. Its modernist gestures are little more than stylistic tics, but there's an image of snow falling on two clasped hands that is almost rapturous. The role of the artist remains, for Mr. Resnais, the role of a lifetime.

Village Voice Jim Ridley

Resnais is now 84 years old; perhaps it takes eight decades of living to make a movie this compassionate, this confident--and this young.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Clever, wise and witty.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Resnais cuts constantly between the various narrative threads, signaling each change of scene with a superimposed shower of snowflakes; it's a highly artificial device, and a deceptively lovely one that reinforces the sense that all Ayckbourn's characters are slowly succumbing to an emotional chill.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

This is a minor film from a master, which is disappointing, but nevertheless it has its charms, most notably in the acting by a cast of stage and screen veterans.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The film is beautifully shot and edited, but these emotional snapshots won't stay long in the memory.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Private Fears says that life is a smoldering holding pattern, but Resnais is gracious enough to blanket the embers with eternal snow.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

The picture is so suavely made that we don't feel disappointed until it is over: what chiefly holds us is the quality of the acting.

Variety Jay Weissberg

Despite a perfect cast of Resnais regulars plus the master's own impeccable crafting, the characters fail to grip, and with approximately 50 short scenes, development comes in fits and starts.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

I found the interlocking bitterness of Ayckbourn's play irritating and overly neat, and these people don't seem to belong to Paris or London or anywhere else, at least not anytime in the last 20 years.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Suffers from Resnais' inability to open it up and give it the look and pulse of a film.

The average user rating for this movie is 10.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page

Private Fears in Public Places IFC First Take

Private Fears in Public Places
IFC First Take