Private Fears in Public Places

Always a unique and distinctive filmmaker, working away in his own fashion and taking little notice of current cinema trends, Alain Resnais’ recent films may not have been as experimental and challenging as his work during the 60s and the 70s but, with a small team of regular actors, his films have continued to be personal affairs, quite unlike anything else in mainstream French cinema. Working in areas and with subjects more common in the popular entertainments of television serials, soap operas, popular theatre and old French music hall, Resnais’ recent films have not only found it difficult to find an audience at the cinema, but their qualities have also consequently been rather underrated. Even more so in the UK, where his last film, a delirious piece of French music hall theatre starring Audrey Tautou, did not even see a theatrical or DVD release. The opportunity to see a new Alain Resnais film released on DVD in the UK is something to be celebrated, though again its qualities may not immediately be apparent.


It’s even difficult to make all the elements that make up the film sound appealing. For the inspiration of his new film, Resnais has returned to the theatre of English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, who has previously been adapted by the director in his highly-stylised 1993 diptych Smoking/No Smoking. Public Fears In Private Places takes a rather soap-opera approach to a large group of interconnected characters, each of them unhappy in their familial and romantic relationships, weighed down by past events, wrapped up in their own isolation, but striving to make a connection to others.

With Resnais’ regular troupe of actors – Sabine Azéma, Pierre Arditti, André Dussollier and, lately, Lambert Wilson - Private Fears In Public Places has much in common with the frivolity of Resnais’ earlier Dennis Potter tribute, On Connaît La Chanson, particularly as the film centres around a branch of an estate agency and the people they come into contact with. Here, on a picturesque corner location in the fashionably up-and-coming Bercy region of Paris, looking out on the snow covered streets, Charlotte (Sabine Azéma) works with Thierry (André Dussollier). Both single, they have worked together a long time and share a lot of common interests, but since Charlotte is a deeply religious woman, Thierry is unsure about the signals he believes she is sending out to him. When she lends him a video recording of her favourite TV show – a show where celebrities select a hymn or religious piece of music that holds special significance for them - Thierry reluctantly gives it a viewing, but is shocked to find it has been recorded over a pornographic film starring an actress who looks surprisingly familiar. He happily accepts Charlotte’s offer of more video tapes.


Their work and after-hours activities bring them into contact with a sombre bunch of characters all having similar difficulties in their lives and relationships. There is Nicole (Laura Morante) and her boyfriend Dan (Lambert Wilson), who are looking for an apartment together, but only half-heartedly, as their relationship is in difficulties; Lionel (Pierre Arditi), a bartender at Dan’s local watering hole with an aging father to look after; and Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré), Thierry’s unlucky-in-love younger (much younger) sister. Each of them are looking to bring something new to their lives, but their past seems to hold them back from making a meaningful connection to the new people they interact with everyday.

With its rather open-endedness and lack of resolution – to say nothing of a music score by Mark Snow no less - Private Fears In Public Places resembles nothing so much as the pilot for a never-to-be-made television series – and indeed, Resnais confessed in a French magazine to being obsessed recently with US TV drama serials. But what sounds like rather pedestrian material of popular television and stage drama becomes something else entirely in the hands of a director like Alain Resnais and his regular actors of the finest calibre. The ensemble work is magnificent, Resnais bringing each of the situations together with fluid ease, giving each of the actors the opportunity to demonstrate their range in the different lives they lead and the different ways the characters interact with each other. Similarly delightful is Resnais’ approach to mise en scène which – like his earlier Ayckbourn adaptation Smoking/No Smoking - is far removed from any kind of realism, evoking a hyper-theatricality, but one that is gloriously coloured, toned and perfectly attuned to the lives of its characters, the constantly falling snow reminiscent of the disquieting inserts on L’Amour à Mort. Any question about the relevance or significance of this apparently lightweight subject matter can therefore be happily discarded – Resnais and his cast raising the material into the realm of pure cinema.

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DVD
Private Fears in Public Places is released in the UK by Artificial Eye. The film is presented on a dual-layer disc, in PAL format, and is encoded for Region 2.

Video
The video transfer of Private Fears in Public Places, like every other DVD release of Alain Resnais’ more recent films, is very disappointing. Looking not at all how I remember the theatrical print, the image here is very soft, almost hazy in places, lacking fine detail in wider shots, and showing up a certain amount of grain. Colours also suffer and seem less well defined. Skin tones in particular look rather pasty, but whites give off a halo glow and blacks are flat, lacking detail and texture, with low-level noise issues making them prone to dissolve into a blur of discolouration. Suspiciously, the running time for the DVD is 120 minutes, exactly the same as the film’s theatrical running time, without the 4% PAL speed-up that would be expected. There are however no motion issues that would normally be associated with a PAL transfer converted from an NTSC source. The print itself is clean, the progressive image is stable and, transferred anamorphically at the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, it can still look good in places – but this is far from how this marvellously photographed and coloured film ought to look.


Audio
The original audio track on this edition is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 only. The French edition certainly comes with a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix and, since there is typically a lot of attention given over to the soundtrack, making use of small background noises and relying on Mark Snow’s music for a lot of the mood, it could certainly benefit from the wider range. As it is here in a straightforward stereo mix, the sound remains clear throughout and is warmly toned, but is not particularly crisp.

Subtitles
Optional English subtitles are provided in a clear white font. The translation is witty and just about perfect, but then it may well have gone back to the original drama for reference. In which case, the French script has adapted the piece very well.

Extras
Interview with Lambert Wilson (21:29)
Speaking perfect English, Wilson summarises the theme of the story, discusses how it applies to his character, Dan, and gives a lot of detail on Resnais’ working method, with constant rehearsal and repetitions going into the preparations before filming.

Interview with Sabine Azéma (19:46)
In French, with English subtitles, Azéma relates how Ayckbourn and Resnais became acquainted through visits they made to Scarborough, and defines what it is about the dramatist’s work that appeals to Resnais. She also talks about the development of her character and how some intense, personal experiences fed into the performances.


Interview with Alan Ayckbourn (24:40)
The English dramatist talks about his own background, influences and how he became interested in writing for the stage. He recounts his meeting with Resnais and gives his thoughts on the director’s film adaptation of his work. Having suffered a stroke a few years ago, he talks about how difficult it has been to get back to writing.

‘Songs That Changed My Life’ Featurette (27:47)
Directed by Bruno Podalydès, and only seen fleetingly in the film, the full interviews from the religious programme recorded by Charlotte are shown in full here. They are certainly amusing for the satire of such television programming, and the unique personal views of religion held by the guests, but are perhaps not something you’d want to watch for half an hour.

Also included in the extra features is a Film Trailer (1:43), which sets the film up as an intense relationship drama, and a brief bio for the director, with a list of selected films in an Alain Resnais Filmography.


Overall
The playwright Alan Ayckbourn doesn’t make any great claims for his drama other than the hope that it might amuse, entertain, enlighten and perhaps touch people in some small way, and that’s certainly all that Alain Resnais intends to do with his film adaptation of Private Fears in Public Places. Crucially however, Resnais brings something of himself and his own sensibility to the work, casting and rehearsing his actors as if for a theatrical presentation, but at the same time bringing something that is uniquely cinematic, and uniquely Alain Resnais. It’s a fabulously shot film that is beautifully coloured for mood, but most disappointingly it hasn’t been given the kind of presentation on DVD that brings out its best qualities. There are no comments from Resnais himself on the film in the extra features – not entirely unexpectedly, although he did do some interviews with French film magazines at the time of the film’s release and an audio interview for the French DVD – but the exclusive interviews here with Lambert, Azéma and Ayckbourn provide plenty of interesting supplemental background information on the film’s making.