User Reviews

I've just seen the movie today, and enjoyed it a lot, even if I won't range it among my Resnais favorites. The story in itself is simple but full of allusions and "non-dits". It reminds me altogether of "Smoking/No Smoking", without the narrative twist, and "On connaît la chanson", without the songs. I like the way Resnais creates a whole universe, half realistic, half dreamlike, with only six characters, limited sets and omnipresent snow. These six characters struggle with loneliness, butting against various obstacles : wrong match, bad luck, lack of will or perverse manipulation. The general atmosphere is kind of sad, but in a cool and soft way (snowy if I may say so), and with humorous touches, especially all that relates to videotapes and an invisible but perfectly audible grumpy old man played by Claude Rich (which makes seven characters actually). The acting is impeccable, with a special note for Sabine Azema, André Dussolier and Pierre Arditi. And an interesting cast for Lambert Wilson (playing against type).

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.

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")

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.

Coeurs, the latest achievement of French master Alain Resnais, stands out as one of the finest European productions of 2006, a fact confirmed by the Silver Lion it was awarded in Venice. While the critics and audience at the festival were more anxious to see other films, like The Black Dahlia or INLAND EMPIRE, this small, intimate, bittersweet character study quietly moved towards well deserved recognition, proving that the great New Wave director had lost none of his special touch.

Like one of his best known films, Smoking/No Smoking, Coeurs is based on a play by Alan Ayckbourn. But whereas Smoking/No Smoking retained its untarnished Englishness, Resnais makes it pretty clear that he's keeping his new work as distant as possible from its literary source: the title is completely different (as the French filmmaker thought Private Fears in Public Places was misleading in regards to the subject), and the story is set in Paris, with the inevitable (and, I might add, quite brilliant) changes in the dialogue that this requires.

The film focuses on six people struggling to achieve or maintain meaningful relationships. There's the aging Thierry (André Dussollier, funny and heartbreaking at the same time) who has to fight his feelings for his younger assistant (Sabine Azéma). There's his sister Gaelle (Isabelle Carré), who goes out on blind dates every night and always comes back hugely disappointed. There's Nicole (Laura Morante), a frustrated woman who's trying to find a nice apartment whilst dealing with her unemployed and increasingly detached boyfriend, Dan (Lambert Wilson). And there's Lionel (Pierre Arditi, a laconic revelation), a lonely bartender who has to take care of his father, the rude, sex-obsessed Arthur (Claude Rich, heard but not seen). Over the course of four days, these characters will meet and affect each others'lives in unexpected, amusing, but also very touching ways.

With this masterwork, Resnais proves himself a true auteur, telling us an apparently simple tale of love and longing with a direct, honest approach, from the hilarious beginning to the moving, open conclusion. In adapting Ayckbourn's stage work, he manages the impossible, which is to make the movie look theatrical but not overly bizarre, using subtle, unpretentious tricks: the speaking parts belong solely to the six leading actors (plus Rich's priceless vocal cameo), every single scene takes place indoors (and the locations are always the same), and, most importantly, sequences are linked by a metaphorical snowfall, which gives the film a poetic, almost magical feel.

Those who thought Closer could have benefited from less swearing and more sympathy for its characters should watch Coeurs. It may not exactly end on a happy note, but at least it doesn't risk sliding into misanthropy. Beneath the apparent pessimism, there's a heart beating. The heart of an experienced director who hasn't stopped to amaze us.

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.

Relationships. They can be funny and sad. There is the relationship of Charlotte (Sabine Azéma) with her co-worker Thierry (André Dussollier). She is very religious and lends him a video of religious music. Of course, when the TV program cuts off, he sees something I am sure she didn't mean for him to see. Or, did she? It is not clear.

Then there is Charlotte and Lionel's (Pierre Arditi) father Arthur (Claude Rich). She is working as a caregiver in the evenings and Arthur, whom we never see, is one cantankerous old bastard. he throws soup on her, speaks foully, and screams at her.

Lionel, a bartender, has to deal with his father, and with Dan (Lambert Wilson), who got kicked out of the Army six months ago and is getting hell from his fiancée, Nicole (Laura Morante) for not finding a job. He spends his time getting plastered.

Thierry and Charlotte are funny the next day discussing the tape. Charlotte has no idea what she left on the end. Thierry is looking forward to another tape. He is not disappointed. Of course, after the second tape, he moves forward with disastrous results, but Charlotte exposes her secret to Lionel and it is just the thing to shut him up. Naturally, she has to do a lot of praying afterward.

Like I said, there is a lot that is funny, and a whole lot that is sad, but isn't that the way relationships are? Alain Resnais got a lot out of some very talented actors and presented a film that was thoroughly enjoyable.

This is based on a piece by English playwright Ayckbourn. His is not a name that comes up frequently any more, but he had a long, successful run, specializing in relationships that mingled pathos with humor. This is one of these circular stories, that focus on a group of characters who are tangentially related, but who don't all know each other. There is Lionel the barman and his horrible, bedridden old father. The father is being cared for by Charlotte, who also works in a real estate office with Thierry. Lionel pours drinks for his alcoholic friend Dan, who is also a client of Thierry. Dan and his girlfriend are looking for an apartment, but their relationship is on the rocks.

All of the characters are struggling with some kind of loneliness or other, but it is presented in a light, amusing manner. A few of the characters are older than usual, which is good to see. I thought that the production design clashed somewhat with the realistic narrative. It is all obviously shot on soundstages, sometimes with garish colors, and for some reason the scene changes are noted with flurries of snow, as if it were a Christmas story.

I do not regret to have rushed to see this movie without proper documentation, because I spent 119 minutes of pure joy, spoiled by an inexplainable ending (solved since).It is of course a testament, but I am only five years younger than Alain Resnais and I prefer to spend them without too much questions asked, about death mostly. It is of course a transcription of an English stage-play, but AR did not choose it blindly, he must be on the same wave length (or shortcut) with Alan Ayckburn. Perfect script, perfect direction, perfect players, making my disappointment even bigger. Besides, the religious devotion of Sabine Azema is far from obvious, and Isabelle Carré looks more like André Dussolier's daughter than sister. The assistance laughed a lot, like I did, and came out smiling, (not me). However, and definitely, the best movie of the year, closely followed by PRADA. harry carasso, Paris

"Private Fears in Public Places" is an extremely frustrating film. On one hand, the film is gorgeous to look at and listen to--simply gorgeous. The transitions are quite imaginative and lovely and the music really sets the mood. I would also say that the film by directed well (by Alain Resnais) and the acting was very, very good. But, as for the story, so much of it seemed to make little sense and the overall pieces, though gorgeous, just didn't seem to fit together.

The story is about several people who are slightly interconnected. They all are struggling with feelings of loneliness and quiet desperation. However, a few stories made no sense and I kept hoping for there to be a sense that it would all make sense....which it didn't (such as the snow INSIDE the house). The story that particularly annoyed me was the Christian lady whose behaviors simply made no sense---was this an attack on Christians or just a badly written character? There just wasn't any rhyme or reason to her actions nor are there any hints about who she is. It's maddening--as are many of the other stories. All work like snippets that just don't make up a coherent whole. A beautiful misfire, but a misfire.

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.

This film is shown occasionally on IFC and is worth watching,some of the performances are quaint and subtle, and the romantic comedy is understated (Though I'm from the states I don't like over the top Hollywood "romantic comedies",actually find them saccharine and intolerable.) Needless to say,the vignettes here are a breath of fresh air. Worth noting is the performance of Sabine Azema,as Charlotte,Isabelle Carre as Gaelle, and Lambert Wilson as Dan.

The sets are original and in the backdrop of snow, in the city of Paris. Romantic and ironic, never trite or cloying. Worth more than one view for audiences with taste who cannot stomach yet another Hollywood serving of trite romance. Recommended.9/10.

Perhaps if I had realised that "Private Fears in Public Places" (the English title for Coeurs) is the name of an Alan Ayckbourn play, I would have stayed away, but the allure of a new movie from one of the great auteurs of the twentieth century was too strong. The man who made Hiroshima mon amour and L'annee derniere a Marienbad has not lost his ability to frustrate the viewer, this time with a series of sad Parisians locked into loneliness and self-defeating behaviours. The "humour" of the film is at the expense of these pathetic characters, for whom it is hard to feel much sympathy, and their complusive and repetitive behaviours rapidly become irritating. Having seen Coeurs, I can understand why Renais' recent output has had little or no distribution in the English speaking world - the film is soulless, overlong and strictly for those who miss the days of the French New Wave.

Another fine example of the accomplished French art of turning daily mundane situations into sheer genius entertainment. With the added bonus of being spoiled with one of Lambert Wilson's brilliant performances. Absolutely fantastic. Excellent script, splendid set, impeccable casting topped of with sublime camera work, lightening & soundtrack. A perfect mix of penchant humour, subtle drama & tantalising coincidences. Just plain top notch French cinema. An absolute masterpiece that qualifies as sin to miss out on. The best word to describe this movie is 'gezellig', a dutch word which unfortunately is notoriously renowned for it's inability to be translated into another language.

I saw Alain Resnais' last movie this afternoon, and i was a bit disappointed. All the critics said how marvelous this was, and i tend to think that this opinion was influenced by their respect for a very old and famous director. Personally, I could sum it up like this : the work of an old director, filming his old actor-friends, for an old audience (the average age in my theater was about 60...) ! I found the pessimistic and bitter-sweet tone interesting, but the whole movie was kind of dull, and I never could get involved in any of the stories. The acting is globally good, with a special distinction to Sabine Azéma, who plays a very unlikely character (would such a person exist ?). The visual effect of the snow is really beautiful. What else, as they say in a certain commercial before the movie ? Nothing else really.

There are several reasons why I chose "Coeurs" as the first Alain Resnais film I would see, chief among them that it seemed interesting and was one of his more acclaimed recent films (and I didn't want to start with films of his that were probably influenced very heavily by the 'Nouveau Roman' writers he worked with, including obviously Alain Robbe-Grillet on "Last Year at Marienbad" and Marguerite Duras on "Hiroshima mon amour"). Also, I find myself very interested in the works of artists who have lived longer than most of us will but are still working, as there is frequently a sort of experience and wisdom there which fascinates me. Also, it was pointed out to me by more than one person that a screenplay I had written with a friend (before either of us had seen or even heard of "Coeurs") was conceptually similar and, according to the one person who had read it, had some plot similarities too. Naturally I wanted to see it for myself.

Ultimately, aside from the format which is quite similar in its moving frequently between different groups of characters for relatively short scenes, there was only one striking similarity which I could detect: in both screenplays two characters go on a blind date using fake names. Other than that, my approach and thought process was almost entirely dissimilar to Resnais', and naturally, although I'd love to say otherwise, it is his which is more interesting. I call it Resnais' approach, but the film is based on an English play and translated/adapted by Jean-Michel Ribes, so due credit to them as well obviously. Still, I was impressed, after hearing from more than one person about Resnais being a generally unintellectual, commercial film-maker, with not only the film's formally dazzling structure, look, and editing, but with the impressive restraint shown at every step. There's no showboating here, and Resnais does absolutely nothing with the film that is not important somehow to the story and characters. His constant use of partitions, the emphasized staginess of the film (though not the acting), as well as the dissolves linking each scene to the next are all crucial to the thematic content of the film.

I initially met the film with some resistance. Some of the humor was too cute, and it felt like light fluff to me initially. However, much like numerous other films, "Coeurs" eventually came together, making the whole experience worthwhile. Ultimately the only things which truly bothered me were some intrusive clichés, all of which were linked directly to the character Charlotte, who really singlehandedly keeps the film from reaching true greatness. Any scenes with her feel like a waste compared to the dazzling scenes with the other characters. Well, to be fair, not every scene: the stuff with Lionel is quite strong (but certainly not the nonsense with his father, which isn't funny nor dramatically strong). When you have a mosaic-like structure of this sort, it's natural that some parts will be less interesting (and it's up to the individual which parts are less interesting), but my personal reaction to Charlotte and her relationship with Thierry was not even mild amusement, but a severe disinterest. The film is oddly distant, surely to emphasize the loneliness of these characters, but it's also wonderfully warm most of the time, and most of the characters are extremely well-drawn. Then you have a caricature who is never truly explored to significantly lessen the quality of the film. It's just plain disappointing.

A very interesting film, certainly a formally excellent one, but I was disappointed in the lesser sections of it. Still, it gets a strong recommendation from me, due to Resnais' direction, thanks to the truly superb acting, and, obviously, the parts of the film (which is the majority of it) which didn't get on my nerves. It's just frustrating that it falls just short of greatness. Also, I think I'm in love with Gaelle now, not the actress, the character.

Alan Ayckbourn's play, 'Private Fears in Public Places', is one of his quieter comedies. Various people seek love and don't find it, for ordinary, mundane, sometimes embarrassing reasons: the plot, such as it is, is driven mostly by a rather ambiguous character whose motivations are never completely explained. But Ayckbourn has not been Britain's most successful playwright for nothing; and the dialogue sparkles, line after line displaying his knack for getting to the heart of the matter with economy, humour, and a feel for real life. At times, Alan Resnais' film, which features many short scenes but very few settings, seems to be trying a little too hard to pretend that this isn't just a filmed play, but without fundamentally changing the dramatic structure: he does, however, get excellent performances from his cast, and makes the work feel very naturally French. It's a pity that the BBC versions of Ayckbourn's work are mostly unavailable (and never, it seems, repeated); but Resnais rendering is still one to be enjoyed.

Coeurs is Alain Resnais 16th feature which he made at the age of 84. This film proved that Alain Resnais still has the same master within, he had in the 1960's. His brilliance and imagination sure didn't stop at Coeurs which he proved in 2009 by making Les herbes folles (Wild Grass), and apparently he is once again making a new film. Alain Resnais has always worked with incredible writers such as Marquerita Duras and Henri Laborit and this time his film is based on an English play 'Private Fears in Public Places' by Alan Ayckbourn. Coeurs is no blind visualization of an already-told story but an insightful look at the world of today, relationships, modern society and the conventional genre of romantic comedy.

There is something incredibly sweet and beautiful in this simple storyline which, at first sight, might seem conventional and stereotypical with regards to romantic comedy. But the way Resnais builds dramaturgy is anything but conventional; as we move from brief scene to another and observe the situations where the characters come across with each other. The themes of the film are common for the director - intimacy, loneliness, disappointment and getting old, but new are the postmodern criticism for the mass culture of television, and a superior way of dealing with the tragicomic fantasies of his characters.

Coeurs features three of Resnais' standard actors (Sabine Azéma, André Dussollier and Pierre Arditi) but new-comers in the world of Alain Resnais are an Italian actress Laura Morante and a French woman Isabelle Carré. Dussollier plays a bitter real-estate agent Thierry who has a dynamic, fundamental Christian colleague Charlotte (Sabine Azéma). Lionel (Pierre Arditi) is a slightly frustrated bartender who listens to the worries of Dan (Lambert Wilson) whose relationship isn't going so well with Nicole (Laura Morante) who tries to find a perfect home for her and Dan. Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré) is Thierry's sister who desperately tries to find a date, and eventually becomes acquainted with Dan.

The film has six protagonists and it wraps around certain threads of blind chance that seem to pull the characters together. It's a film about six people who come across with each other without really meeting or knowing each other. Each scene features a situation between two characters and we are quickly thrown from one situation to another but still never lose our track of what is going on. I think Resnais has found new emotional scales in Coeurs, which he didn't have before in his political films (1960's) nor in his "philosophical" films (1980's). The viewer actually cares, and has sympathy for the characters portrayed - which is too rare these days. I love, and prefer, the earlier films by Resnais so I mean no disrespect for them. This elegant story about six people remind the viewer of Resnais' classic Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and a bunch of other films by him, for example, Mon oncle d'Amérique (1980) - where there is a certain ensemble of protagonists.

Coeurs is a very Resnaisian film in all its histrionics. The film is entirely filmed in a setting that is clearly a studio. For instance, there are no roofs which is shown to the viewer in bird perspective shots. In the real-estate office there are movable glass walls, and we see that the characters don't notice it, but the camera shows it to us - fiction knows that it's fiction, the movie admits that it is only a movie. Strong pastel shades also characterize Coeurs - pink, orange and white walls, and lights.

The characters make different interpretations of the same theme of sad melancholy life and the inability of man to see. The span of these themes is incredibly wide; from tragic (Lionel and his cruel father) to pathetic (Thierry and Gaëlle). Snow is the most surreal, Resnaisian, element of the film. Throughout the film it snows - everywhere. Resnais had already used snow flakes in L'Amour a Mort where he wanted to tell about life, death and hereafter. But in Coeurs the snow represents a wintry state of mind and the benumbed emotional lives of the characters.