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Private Fears in Public Places
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 18 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 3 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
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)
Summary
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)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The film is beautifully shot and edited, but these emotional snapshots won't stay long in the memory.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Suffers from Resnais' inability to open it up and give it the look and pulse of a film.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.3 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
tomasz w gave it a2:
Very stagey and psychologically incomprehensible. Where did these people come from, where do they live? They may speak French but the city ain't Paris but some outer space for seemingly human strays. A waste of time.
Dan P gave it a10:
An exquisite film to see! Resnais applies his roots in French experimental filmmaking to this dialogue-driven film. Every set piece and camera movement is visually stunning.
