Private Fears in Public Places

A handful of characters struggle to hold on to relationships with the people they care for in this collaboration between playwright Alan Ayckbourn and filmmaker Alain Resnais. Dan (Lambert Wilson) has recently finished up a hitch in the Army, but rather than deal with his emotional issues, Dan ...more

Comedy tinged with melancholy is the order of the day in Alain Resmnais' delicious Private Fears in Public Places. It's a skillful adaptation (by Resnais and Jean-Michel Ribes) of Alan Ayckbourn's stage play, transposing the playwright's quite-British characters to France in what turns out to be a quite natural manner. Resnais chooses to emphasize a little less of the formality inherent in Ayckbourn's play (though that is still very much in evidence) and to suggest slightly more of a fated ...more