Private Fears in Public Places

In a snowing Paris, six lonely dwellers have their lives entwined while seeking for love: Nicole (Laura Morante) is looking for a three bedroom apartment to move with her fiancé Dan (Lambert Wilson), who is unemployed and has drinking problem. Her middle-aged real estate agent Thierry (André Dussollier) lives with his younger sister Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré) that tells him that party with her girlfriends every night. However Gaëlle indeed spends her nights alone in cafeterias waiting for blind dates that never appear for the encounter. Thierry's colleague is the pious and repressed Charlotte (Sabine Azéma) that loans a videotape with a musical religious show to him. But in the end, Thierry sees her in an erotic dance and he believes she is sending a sign for to him. Charlotte is nursing during the nights the aggressive and nasty father of the bartender Lionel (Pierre Arditi) that attends Dan every night in his bar.

"Coeurs" is an overrated and pointless tale of loneliness. The cold and snowing Paris is a kind of metaphor to the frustration in the relationship of the uptight characters that are afraid to deliver themselves to their passions. However the hype surrounding this movie increased my disappointment with the melancholic story. The characters are charismatic and likable and it is easy to the viewer to sympathize with them. Nevertheless the gorgeous Isabelle Carré is miscast in the role Gaëlle, since she is younger and younger than her brother and she is so beautiful that I can not understand how she does not succeed in her blind dates. There are good dialogs but the conclusion is too open and frustrating for a 120 minutes running time feature that gives the sensation of "so what?" to the viewer. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Medos Privados em Lugares Públicos" ("Private Fears in Public Spaces")

OK, the acting is good, and the camera work is competent, when we're not having to watch the lighting suddenly change for no reason, or when we're not wondering why two people sitting in a kitchen talking are getting snowed on. But the plot is ridiculous. The characters do a lot of talking, but not much else. Two of them allegedly work together in a real estate office, but they never do any work, and aside from one of the other characters in the movie, no one ever comes into their office. I kept wondering how they stayed in business. Two of them are allegedly brother and sister, but the sister is 40 years younger than the brother, and this difference is never explained. And why are they living together? Two are engaged, but there is not the slightest warmth between them, and we are left wondering how the engagement ever happened. Several characters seem to get a personality transplant halfway through the movie. One is always off camera, for no particular reason. None of them seems to have any basic common sense. They are completely unappealing, and therefore we never care what happens to them. The only compensation is the French, which is very clear and simple.

The French film Coeurs was shown in the U.S. with the title Private Fears In Public Places (2006). It was directed by Alain Resnais. Resnais directed the brilliant film, Hiroshima mon Amour (1959). (IMDb rating 7.9.) It's hard to believe that 47 years later he would direct this light-weight movie.

The concept is interesting--three men and three women who live in Paris. All of them know at least one other person, but, actually, all six are connected. There's just one degree of separation between the people who don't know each other. For example, Dan (Lambert Wilson) and his fiancé Nicole (Laura Morante) are looking for an apartment. The real estate agent who shows them the apartment is Thierry (André Dussollier). His sister is Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré), dates Dan after he breaks up with Nicole. However, he's unaware that the real estate agent he met is Gaëlle's brother.

The key player of the six is Charlotte (Sabine Azéma). She is the pious secretary in Thierry's office, but also has a nighttime job where she cares for Lionel's sick father. Lionel (Pierre Arditi) is Dan's bartender. And so it goes. Incidentally, Charlotte is the most interesting character in the movie, because she has a very dark secret.

All the meetings (and near meetings) take place in a Paris where it is always snowing. The characters enter with snow on their coats and hats. It's fake snow, so it never melts. It just sits there. I assume that's very symbolic. The snow is an recurring, annoying element.

Some of the casting doesn't make sense. Isabelle Carré portrays André Dussollier's younger sister. Well, very younger sister. Carré is 25 years younger than Dussollier. She should be his daughter, not his sister.

All in all, a mediocre movie by a famous director. It has an IMDb rating of 6.9, which is just about right. We saw it on DVD, where it worked well. You might want to check it out, but, then again, you might not.

Adapted from Alan Ayckbourn's recent (2004) play, this movie has a structure that reminds me of two well known plays. The structure of some 50 short scenes brings to mind Noel Coward's "Cavalcade". Having plots revolving around 6 characters draws an obvious comparison to Luigi Pirandello's "Six characters in search of an author". But both similarities are superficial. "Private fears" is a distinctly different play.

The interrelationship between the six characters is somewhat random, but clever for this very randomness. These various relationships include real estate agent and client, office co-workers, brother/sister, part-time aged-parent-sitter and employer, engaged couple living together, bartender and familiar client, blind dates. Each character is party to two or three of these relationships. Some of these relationships we see right from the beginning; others evolve right before our eyes. Outwardly casual relationships have subtle intimacy; apparently intimate relationships turn out to be rather casual. The emotional spectrum goes from heart-breaking poignancy to hilarious farce. There is never a dull moment in this movie, (except to those who have a tendency to fall asleep UNLESS there is a car chase, an explosion or steaming sex).

"Private fears" also offers a good mix of art house appeal and mainstream entertainment. Artsy scenes, not overused, enrich the film throughout: entire scene shot from overhead, montage transformation of a conversation at a kitchen table to the snowy outdoors - just two most conspicuous examples. Nor does the movie shy away from cliché comic situations when then are called for.

This portrayal of ultimate loneliness in the urban alienation of the City of Lights is brought to the audience by an excellent cast of mostly director Alain Resnais' veterans.

What's good about this film are the Resnais trademarks - the beautiful apartments, the interesting details of decor and props, the great camera-work, the excellent acting from an attractive cast, the acute observation of people's behaviour, motivations and relationships. So, why the moderate score? All this attention on surface appearances results in a certain superficiality. Several unconnected stories, while not an unknown approach, create a certain distance from the characters. Influential relationships, for example father-son, are not shown on screen. And as in many French films, no-one seems to work much or has to deal with real world problems outside of relationships. There's little real logic in story lines or outcomes. There's also a certain clumsy dependence on overt clichés: video porn is compelling for men but denounced by women, men need space and women need children, there are difficult old men and naive young women, misunderstandings abound. Like candy floss or indeed video porn, enjoyable at the time, but it doesn't leave lasting memories.