Private Fears in Public Places, the international title for French film Coeurs, is based on a play, and it certainly feels like it.
Set in Paris during a very snowy winter, there’s precious little work done to immerse the audience in the setting, leading to a somewhat artificial, occasionally even claustrophobic feel. There’s a swooping intro to the city, a few overhead shots of characters walking through apartments, and falling snow laid over scene changes, but otherwise, you could just as easily be watching a play as a film.
There are six characters with significantly less than six degrees of separation between them. There’s Nicole (Laura Morante), who is looking for a three-room flat for her and her unemployed, drunken fiancée Dan (Lambert “The Merovingian” Wilson) to move into.
Dan spends all of his time in a hotel bar, talking to a very patient bartender, Lionel (Pierre Arditi), and, when things fall apart with Nicole, begins dating Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré).
Lionel shares his apartment with his ailing, elderly and quite belligerent father, and he hires a devout Christian woman to act as his caregiver while he’s tending bar. This is Charlotte (Sabine Azéma).
Charlotte’s day job is as a secretary of some sort at a real estate agent where Thierry (Amelie narrator André Dussollier) works.
Thierry is Nicole’s real estate agent, and Gaëlle’s older brother, whom he shares an apartment with.
They and their relationships are all gradually, even leisurely introduced, as are their conflicts, all of which seem to revolve around loneliness and the way we seek to stave it off. Alternately amusing and depressing, it’s an engaging look at day-to-day existential struggles. There is some very nice set design in play here, and it’s a good thing to, since director Alain Resnais (Night and Fog) rigorously keeps all of his action on those few sets.
Private Fears in Public Places screens at The Wexner Center for the Arts’ Film/Video Theater Friday and Saturday, July 13-14, at 7 p.m. For more info, click to wexarts.org.