Private Fears in Public Places

Resnais has a taste for British drama. One of his best films, "Providence," was filmed in English with a superb cast, including John Guilgud, Dirk Bogarde, and others. His most recent is taken from a stage play by Sir Alan Ayckbourn, England's most prolific, if not best, playwright. This bittersweet concoction came to New York in one of the best productions to appear off-Broadway in years. Filmed in French, it continues to tear at the viewer's flail, tattered soul, as it exposes the loneliness of urban life in brutally exacting scenes. Shown in different settings scattered throughout the great metropolis of Paris, a disparate collection of lost souls wander through their lives and the lives of others as though lost. Each wants, as it were, to go home, but can't find his or her way. Resnais films each scene in winter, with snow visible through office and apartment windows; the wintry setting underscores the cold, hard realty of life without love or warmth or comfort. The cast is uniformly fine. The direction, as one would expect, is perfect. If you like sitting in the snow, you'll love this. Bring a scarf.

Very Intricate and complex film with a lot of twists and turns in it. Music score was MAGNIFICENT!!! I loved the character Charlotte. She was very complex and kept you guessing until the very end. The ending was very sad and left me with tear filled eyes. Sabine Azema and Isabelle Carre were incredibly HOT!!! Great film for someone just learning french. There are a lot of nuances in the film that require a second viewing in order to catch them. This is one of the BEST films in my collection!

The Paris of Alain Resnais' "Private Fears in Public Places" ("Coeurs" <"Hearts"> in France) is a cold, heartless place. A place in which people attempt to meet, talk at rather than with each other and try their best to make a real connection but that is not to be as the vagaries of life invariably get in their way.
All of the characters are of middle age: 40-60 years of age. These are people who have achieved a certain amount of success but whose personal lives are as messy as any 20 year olds.
The décor of "PFPP" plays a major role here: all hard, shiny surfaces, bright, fake colors that do not exist in nature...all of these things contribute to the erzatz 1970's feel of Resnais mise en scene: there is no doubt that the sets are indeed sets as Resnais makes no claim to reality here even going to extreme lengths to open up the 3rd wall and film from above.
Laura Morante, eye-poppingly beautiful as Nicole: frustrated with her fiancé, Dan (Lambert Wilson, recently separated from the Army and at odds and ends with what he is going to do for the rest of his life) are the most interesting of all the couples and quasi-couples. Nicole and Dan circle each other only fitfully making anything resembling contact. They dispassionately argue, they fake romance: they are empty vessels and seem happy to remain as such.
"Private Fears in Public Places" is bright and shiny though at times it gets dark particularly when the incessant snowfall gets denser. Resnais is after obfuscation here. He seeks to muddy what we want made clear. His people are symbols, not real, thoughtful human beings: they seek succor and immediate pleasure and enlightenment. What they get is God's hand squashing them like bugs.

I got the impression from the picture on the jacket that this was going to be a 'light-hearted romantic comedy' but actually it is a very sad, exploration of loneliness and in the end very touching and done with great kindness and sensitivity. When you do laugh it is so subtle and heartfelt that it surprises you. One laugh like that is worth a thousand of the regular kind. I was especially moved by the two older gentlemen, the real estate agent and the bartender. The bartender is a rather tragic figure who appears to be very cynical at first glance but in a very subtle and understated way reveals a great heart. The real estate agent is the only funny one in the movie, but he too does this in such an understated way that it appears to be even more marvelous. You know sometimes actors knock themselves out to appear lovable or funny. They should take a good look at these people. It would probably go over their heads anyway but I found it strangely awesome. I gave the film only 4 stars because I thought the film itself wasn't up to that high level. Maybe 4 and a half for these lovely performances.

Paris is snowbound in this weird six degrees of separation style film about couples and others who are connected, but don't know it. The alcoholic Romeo makes for the best tale, but the senile grandpa's hilarious sexual harassment of his caretaker is pretty good, too. What it all means I leave to the critics. It's modern French cinema. If you like that, you won't be disappointed.

Film follows the story of six people who, to a small degree, are all connected to each other. There is an engaged couple where woman is strong and independent and the man is weak, unemployed and on the path of self-destruction. Real estate agent works in the office with his assistant who is seemingly sexually repressed but makes video tapes that make his head spin. His pretty, insecure sister, overly protected by the stern family members is unable to have a successful date even thru a love ad section. And then, there is a lonely bartender, so professional in his work at the hotel that screams of kitch in its decor and clientele. We learn about his strong willed mother who had horrowing death, father who has left them both while he was a child and is now a bedridden abusive monster. This man quietly completes his duty as a son to both of his parents while leading his solitary life that evolves around sick parents, home and work at a hotel bar. We know that he has lost his love of his life years ago, but there is only a hint that the affair may have been homosexual. There are several funny moments in the movie, particularly when a real-estate agent watches the tape at home, loaned to him by his female co-worker that is peppered with soft porn -- until his sister walks in on him after unexpected return home from her unsuccessful date. All six of these characters are trying so hard to find their way out from their loneliness but with not much success. Throughout the film there are scenes of winter and snow in Paris, that only reminds us that there is coldness in our protagonists lives and there seems to be no end to it. Wonderful meditation on detachment and our inability in today's modern world to connect to each other, greatly due to our own inadequacies.

Beautifully performed and photographed, with striking artistic design, this film about lonely hearts in the city of love leaves you empty, sad, and feeling maybe a little cheated because it's too easy to see the characters driven by somebody else's choices - in this case the writer and director, who want to be sure their characters don't get what they want. And through no fault of their own. These are ordinary people with their strengths and weaknesses who might just as well have found the love they are searching for except for the point of the film, that people are doomed to loneliness and disappointment. Though stylishly presented in a continuing surreal snowfall that not only falls outside in the streets of Paris but divides the separate scenes as well, the interlocking stories of the characters won't persuade every viewer that this is a credible vision of the human condition or the necessary fate of men and women.

The film does ask interesting questions, particularly as it interjects a church-going woman (never mind that she also makes sleazy videotapes of herself to give to her employer) who speaks of the importance of her faith, reads her Bible, and kneels to pray. In parts of the film, we see characters from above as they walk through rooms, as if being watched by some higher power or deity. Or it could just be the sky from which the snow continually falls. Watch the film for the fine performances by actors of a range of ages and see an old master of French cinema at work. But don't expect an uplifting or even believable resolution to all the conflicts and complications.

Alain Resnais is famous for french new wave-films like Last Year in Marienbad, Hiroshima mon Amour and Muriel. This late film of his is definitely not one of his better (though despite this it is better than most of the crap they call cinema). Worth watching but not buying.

**1/2

In seminal works such as "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" and "Last Year at Marienbad," legendary French director Alain Resnais created a whole new vocabulary and grammar for film. His key innovation involved the creation of the time-shuffling narrative coupled with near-subliminal quick cuts in the editing. Ironically, his revolutionary style was appropriated so quickly by directors the world over that the technique became something of a cinematic cliché almost overnight (with even poor Resnais himself falling victim to his own success, as his later films often felt as if they too were borrowing from the master). One can even detect Resnais' influence in such disparate American movies as "Two For the Road" and "Slaughterhouse-Five," not to mention practically half of all the "serious" dramas that come our way these days (i.e. "21 Grams," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Babel").

Although his latest endeavor, "Private Fears in Public Places," takes place pretty much in a linear time frame, it still manages to tell three concurrently running stories of lost love, each set in a slightly surreal Paris where people interact with one another in stylized settings and where snow falls relentlessly in the background. The cast of characters includes an ex-soldier who has turned to alcoholism and indolence as a means of covering up a "shameful" event that happened to him while he was in the army; his beautiful fiance who has grown increasingly frustrated by her boyfriend's indifference to her and the life he is leading; a middle-aged bartender who is having to cope with the increasingly violent temper of his irascible, ailing father; a compassionate, deeply religious caregiver who forms a bond with the old man's son; and a real estate agent who lives with his desperately lonely sister and who becomes fascinated by the pornographic tapes his seemingly prim-and-proper co-worker (who is also the caregiver) keeps loaning to him.

As a longtime admirer of Resnais' work, I wish I could say that I enjoyed "Private Fears in Public Places" more than I did. As a study of a group of lonely, unhappy people trapped in a loveless world, this extremely well-acted movie boasts a fair number of moving and even rather funny moments that perfectly capture the soul-crushing angst of modern life. The script is also commendably audacious in not providing a happily-ever-after ending for its characters. Yet, for all its virtues, the movie itself turns out to be less than the sum of its parts, primarily due to its over length and the desultory pacing that drains much of the passion and energy out of the film. Resnais and writer Jean-Michel Ribes - with Alan Ayckbourn's play as their blueprint - do a decent enough job making all the pieces of the narrative puzzle fit together into a grander scheme, but the claustrophobic, stage bound nature of the work ultimately makes us restless. And even though I acknowledge that it is probably that very iciness and claustrophobia that lie at the root of what the film is all about, that realization doesn`t make the movie any more entertaining to watch.

Not a bad movie really, just not one of his best.