LOS ANGELES, Jan. 13 (UPI) — Jodie Foster said she told the director of her French film A Private Life, in theaters Friday, she was unsure of her comic abilities. In the dark comedy, Foster plays a psychiatrist investigating the alleged suicide of one of her patients.
Lilian Steiner (Foster) suspects her patient, Paula (Virginie Efira) was a murder victim of her husband (Mathieu Amalric). Lilian violates boundaries of patient confidentiality, medical ethics and even trespassing to satisfy her suspicions.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Foster shared the caveat she gave director Rebecca Zlotowski.
“I don’t know how funny I am,” Foster said she told the director. “I know I have humor as a person. I’m actually a pretty light person but I don’t know that my talent lies in comedy as an actor.”
Foster has starred in comedies Carnage, Maverick and as a child, Freaky Friday and directed the comedy Home for the Holidays. And it’s as a director that Foster is most skeptical about her comic prowess.
“I don’t know that I would hire me as a comedic actor that often,” Foster said. “I’ve done a few of them that I think I managed to get through okay.”
In the comedy Foster directed, Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning and Steve Guttenberg are among the comedic actors sitting around Home for the Holidays’ Thanksgiving table. Foster said that comedy derived from stories people shared with her, as well as the Chris Radant short story on which it was based.
“It’s all supposed to be about love but there’s a lot of pressure around love and connection,” she said of her 1995 film. “I really wanted to make a comedy about what it felt like to be 30 years old and be completely infantilized by your parents when you went home for the holidays.”
In A Private Life, Lilian is the butt of most jokes. Her remaining patients call her out on her ineffective treatment.
“She doesn’t listen very well, she’s judgy and kind of elitist,” Foster said. “I think that’s fun. A lot of the comedy in the film is at the expense of my character.”
Lilian’s treatment is based in Freudian analysis, which supplies other aspects of humor. Foster said the outdated school of thought also gets a good ribbing in the film.
“In America, we kind of canceled Freud a long time ago,” Foster said. “We decided he was a misogynist with good cause.”
Foster has spoken French since she began Lycée Français de Los Angeles from age 9. She said she has been waiting for a French role in “a real auteur French movie.”
Lilian is also an American in France, which leads to one of the film’s big mysteries. Lilian records her sessions, and one of Paula’s is stolen.
“Her excuse was, ‘Listen, I was worried that I didn’t speak French well enough to be able to really understand the subtleties of the language and I didn’t want to miss something,'” Foster said. “It’s something that you’re not supposed to be doing. It’s supposed to be about the actual interaction between people,”
Lilian also suffers from a condition that makes her eyes tear. Foster said she does not cry on command in dramatic scenes, let alone in random ones, so visual effects or droplets provided the tears.
“I never learned that magic trick to cry on command,” she said.
Playing a psychiatrist also reflected Foster’s approach to acting. Foster said she loves analyzing her characters and how they relate to other characters.
“If you’re interested in psychology, you’re interested in being an actor and vice versa,” Foster said. “Psychology is really just the study of communication between people, relationships, all the things I love as an actor.”
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