Private Fears in Public Places (Coeurs) (2006)
Average Rating: 7/10
Reviews Counted: 66
Fresh: 52 | Rotten: 14
The premise isn't anything new, but director Alain Resnais' attention to detail and smooth camerawork gives this movie a delicate edge.
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Critic Reviews: 23
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 6
The premise isn't anything new, but director Alain Resnais' attention to detail and smooth camerawork gives this movie a delicate edge.
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Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 4,867
Movie Info
A handful of characters struggle to hold on to relationships with the people they care for in this collaboration between playwright Alan Ayckbourn and filmmaker Alain Resnais. Dan (Lambert Wilson) has recently finished up a hitch in the Army, but rather than deal with his emotional issues, Dan prefers to get drunk. While he barely communicates with his girlfriend, Nicole (Laura Morante), she's convinced they will still marry and opts to ignore his obvious problems. Lionel (Pierre Arditi) is a
Apr 13, 2007 Wide
Aug 7, 2007
IFC Films
Cast
-
Laura Morante
Nicole -
Lambert Wilson
Dan -
Pierre Arditi
Lionel -
Isabelle Carré
Gaelle -
André Dussollier
Thierry -
Sabine Azéma
Charlotte -
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All Critics (69) | Top Critics (23) | Fresh (52) | Rotten (14) | DVD (6)
What reaches us, most of all, are the hidden, unmet longings that keep the film's Parisian characters from finding true happiness.
Top CriticThe tenderness with which Resnais observes their efforts makes for genuinely enchanting entertainment.
Private Fears suffers from [director Alain] Resnais' inability to open it up and give it the look and pulse of a film.
Resnais shapes affecting performances from a polished cast. He creates a warm, comic melancholy.
Resnais has always been an expressionist, using his settings and compositions to evoke the inner states of his characters. Here, tying expressionism to social critique, he becomes an improbable but unmistakable blood brother of Carl Dreyer.
A film about love and blunders done from the perspective of age, crafted by writer Alan Ayckbourn, 68, and director Alain Resnais, 85. Our younger directors and screenwriters should show this much brilliance and feeling.
A graceful roundelay of disconnection
What makes Private Fears so extraordinary is not just how it completely upends the expectations that have come to seem inherent in such a structure, but how Resnais constantly pushes the boundaries of his, well, let's call it visual depiction.
There is a different side to everyone in Alain Resnais' enigmatic film about six strangers whose Parisian lives randomly intersect.
A gentle look at the pain of loneliness that almost all of us feel from time to time.
A feast for the eyes.
Warm and wry, funny and sad, cute and complicated.
Not one he'll be remembered for, but a cut above.
While there's a quirky humour at work, the overall mood is of sadness, eloquently, if repetitively, expressed.
Private Fears is so fluently made that its edginess only gradually becomes evident. It's both funny and sad, without underlining anything, and the playing is as good as you would expect from Resnais's regulars.
Ayckbourn's play might have made frothy fun of this comedie humaine, on screen this feels a poor, airless thing.
This French film based on a play by Scarborough's finest Sir Alan Ayckbourn is best described as a little bit pedestrian.
Quiet desperation is an emotion you'll probably feel as you wait for the movie to end.
The theatrical, colour-coded sets, graceful camerawork and scene-bridging snowfall motif create a quasi-fairytale feel. But it's the beautifully tuned ensemble acting that infuses this funny, sad treat with real humanist heft.
No one would argue that this slight six-hander is one of Resnais's greatest movies, but it's far from an embarrassment, and even its strained comic business is enclosed within a prevailing atmosphere of wistful resignation.
Neither comic, nor tragic, nor tragicomic, the movie manages to be entirely inconsequential, gesturing at emotional truths which it is quite unable to embody.
Although now well into his eighties, Resnais brings an elegance and lightness of touch to this romantic roundelay - it's not the most profound musing on life and love, but it's eminently watchable.
Beautifully judged ensemble pieces.
An insightful reflection on relationships and solitude.
Resnais and his superb cast have poured their hearts into this film adaptation and anyone seeking mature entertainment should search for this gem.
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Movie: ID: 351527197 Title: Private Fears in Public Places (Coeurs) Release Date: 2007-04-13 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 6 Status: 1
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Foreign Titles
- Coeurs - Herzen (DE)
- Private Fears In Public Places (UK)
