Private Fears in Public Places/Coeurs
Factoring out fluctuations in my mood and the helter-skelter of the prior day, I start my day striving to reserve judgment on my fellow mortals and trust that people are generally decent people. A film like the Alain Resnais adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn's Private Fears in Public Places pulls the cynic out of me and encourages that effort.
Using multiple storylines and characters, this French language English-subtitled film follows the lives of six main characters looking for love in the everlastingly snowy backdrop of Paris. It's a small world, so of course characters cross paths. Much like the six degrees of separation between Kevin Bacon and the rest of Hollywood, the characters in the film are all linked. Nicole (Laura Morante) is engaged to Dan (Lambert Wilson) who ends up in blind date fling with Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré) the sister of Thierry (André Dussollier) who quietly lusts after Charlotte (Sabine Azéma) who cares for the father of Lionel (Pierre Arditi).
With beautiful smashes of snow segueing scene to scene, the characters traipse through the trials of their lives. For all of their flaws, each character powerfully transmits a distinct feel of humanity.
Nicole is an unappealing thrust of tension, yet clearly she does not understand the pressure she puts on Dan. Dan appears as a lazy sort, but really he is the disheveled remains left from an emotionally abusive father. Gaëlle claims to bore even herself, but she continues to optimistically scours Internet ads for love. Thierry takes on the role of voyeur when he comes across the scantily clad, gyrating Charlotte on the ends of the tapes she loans him, but he does so grudgingly showing that he knows better than to accept the gift of free, peeping-tom porn. Charlotte, well, she videotapes herself stripping down to dominatrix leather even as she tries desperately to live the life of a good Christian. Lionel comes across as the most innocent of all. A bartender, he neglects his own well-being to maintain an army of caregivers to tend to the exaggeratedly cantankerous father who abandoned him as a child.
Just as you get a taste of a character's nasty side, a chaser of their weakness washes away any reaction of disdain. The reality of human nature remains and a character that might have been perceived as a beacon of a world gone wrong, becomes instantly recognizable as the flawed being in all of us.
Grades
Overall: B
Story: B+
Acting: B
Visuals: B
Originality/Innovation: B
Enjoyability: B
DVD Extras: C
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