PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

paul2001sw-1 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.

Harry T. Yung 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.

Roland E. Zwick In seminal works such as "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" and "Last Year at Marienbad," legendary French director Alain Resnais created a whole new vocabulary and grammar for film. His key innovation involved the creation of the time-shuffling narrative coupled with near-subliminal quick cuts in the editing. Ironically, his revolutionary style was appropriated so quickly by directors the world over that the technique became something of a cinematic cliché almost overnight (with even poor Resnais himself falling victim to his own success, as his later films often felt as if they too were borrowing from the master). One can even detect Resnais' influence in such disparate American movies as "Two For the Road" and "Slaughterhouse-Five," not to mention practically half of all the "serious" dramas that come our way these days (i.e. "21 Grams," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Babel").Although his latest endeavor, "Private Fears in Public Places," takes place pretty much in a linear time frame, it still manages to tell three concurrently running stories of lost love, each set in a slightly surreal Paris where people interact with one another in stylized settings and where snow falls relentlessly in the background. The cast of characters includes an ex-soldier who has turned to alcoholism and indolence as a means of covering up a "shameful" event that happened to him while he was in the army; his beautiful fiancé who has grown increasingly frustrated by her boyfriend's indifference to her and the life he is leading; a middle-aged bartender who is having to cope with the increasingly violent temper of his irascible, ailing father; a compassionate, deeply religious caregiver who forms a bond with the old man's son; and a real estate agent who lives with his desperately lonely sister and who becomes fascinated by the pornographic tapes his seemingly prim-and-proper co-worker (who is also the caregiver) keeps loaning to him.As a longtime admirer of Resnais' work, I wish I could say that I enjoyed "Private Fears in Public Places" more than I did. As a study of a group of lonely, unhappy people trapped in a loveless world, this extremely well-acted movie boasts a fair number of moving and even rather funny moments that perfectly capture the soul-crushing angst of modern life. The script is also commendably audacious in not providing a happily-ever-after ending for its characters. Yet, for all its virtues, the movie itself turns out to be less than the sum of its parts, primarily due to its over length and the desultory pacing that drains much of the passion and energy out of the film. Resnais and writer Jean-Michel Ribes - with Alan Ayckbourn's play as their blueprint - do a decent enough job making all the pieces of the narrative puzzle fit together into a grander scheme, but the claustrophobic, stage bound nature of the work ultimately makes us restless. And even though I acknowledge that it is probably that very iciness and claustrophobia that lie at the root of what the film is all about, that realization doesn't make the movie any more entertaining to watch.Not a bad movie really, just not one of his best.

fw-1 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.