Jodie Foster plays a self-assured psychoanalyst whose composure unravels after a patient unexpectedly dies in the genre-bending French film “A Private Life.”

Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest, in theaters Friday, is part noir, part comedy of remarriage, and part Freudian fever dream about past lives.

This is a film that does not abide by rules or play into any easy expectations about what it should be, resulting in big swings, tonal shifts and even a lurking Holocaust through-line. Also, oddly enough considering such grave themes and subjects, it’s all done with a relatively light touch set, in part, by the cheeky needle drop at its opening: the Talking Heads song “Psycho Killer.” Some parts work better than others, but you can’t help but admire the go-for-broke originality and unabashed femininity of it all. And anchoring it all is Foster, using the full force of her star power and impeccable French to make “A Private Life,” unwieldy and complex as it is, go down as easy as a glass of gamay.

Foster’s character, Dr. Lilian Steiner, is an American expat living and working in France. She’s an accomplished, sophisticated woman who believes she has a grasp on people and the world around her, recording and cataloging all her private sessions with clients on meticulously organized CDs. This act in and of itself is a little odd — her son wonders why she doesn’t just use a more modern method, for instance. But it also kind of gets to the heart of why, perhaps, despite her evident intelligence, there’s a cold disconnect between analyst and subject. Is she even listening to them?

Lilian starts to wonder this herself after she receives a call that her client Paula ( Virginie Efira ) has died by suicide. Paula was not someone she believed was capable of this. Instead of looking inward, she goes back to the tapes to begin an amateur investigation to find some other explanation: It must be murder, she concludes. Suspects include Paula’s daughter Valérie (Luàna Bajrami) and husband Simon (Mathieu Amalric).

She also enlists a sidekick in her sleuthing, her ex-husband Gabriel (a delightful Daniel Auteuil ) who is more than happy to go along for the ride, to listen to her conspiracy theories over several bottles of wine, to be a decoy distraction so that she can snoop through Simon’s house, and, ultimately, to just be there for her, no matter how unhinged she’s becoming. You can just see the love and admiration in his attentiveness. He’s not off put by the crazy; it’s just part of what makes her, well, her. Their rekindled relationship, so effortlessly lived in, so mature, so fun, is by far the highlight of “A Private Life.”

It’s a shame that their romance is basically a side show to the more convoluted rest, which involves a hypnotist and a revelation of a past life in which Lilian and Paula were members of the same WWII-era orchestra and lovers torn apart by jealous exes and Nazis. One of those Nazis is Lilian’s son (Vincent Lacoste), which she awkwardly, drunkenly tells him at his birthday dinner to try to explain why they’ve never been that close. She’s also completely disinterested in her grandchild, which might be one “let’s unpack that” too many in this film. In other words, there’s a lot going on in “A Private Life,” which Zlotowski co-wrote with Anne Berest.

One thing there’s not enough of is Efira. She gets some moments in flashback, but most of them teeter on the “dead wife montage” cliche. It’s not that Zlotowski wasn’t aware of what she had in Efira (case in point, their poignant, tender work together in “Other People’s Children”), but perhaps she was counting on our familiarity to fill in the gaps.

“A Private Life” is ultimately Foster’s show anyway and she seems to relish the tricky assignment. The tone around her might be on the lighter side, but for Lilian, the stakes are grave with the very essence of her self-worth and life’s work on the line. It’s a fascinating portrait of a woman essentially forced to rethink and revise all of the rules she’d lived by, the facts that she made sense of the world with and submit herself to the idea that some things might just be unknowable — even for a know-it-all psychoanalyst.

“A Private Life,” a Sony Pictures Classics release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language, graphic nudity, brief violence, some sexual content.” Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.

After another impressively profitable weekend in theaters, James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” helped crown its star Zoe Saldaña the queen of the box office.

The third “Avatar” movie boasted $21.3 million in North American sales last week, bringing it to a global total of $1.23 billion. With those impressive stats, Saldaña officially surpassed Scarlett Johansson as the highest-grossing actor of all time.

The Oscar winner has grossed more than $15.47 billion at the international box office, according to box office tracking website the Numbers. Johansson only recently gained the title after surpassing her “Avengers” co-star Samuel L. Jackson with the release of last summer’s “Jurassic World Rebirth.”

What helped buoy Saldaña to the top is the fact that the 47-year-old actor stars in the three highest-grossing films of all time: 2009’s “Avatar” ($2.9 billion), 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” ($2.8 billion) and 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” ($2.3 billion).

Saldaña is also the only actor to appear in four movies that brought in over $2 billion worldwide. (2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War” grossed $2.05 billion.)

Last year proved that Saldaña’s talent exceeded the realm of popcorn movies when she nabbed her first Academy Award for her supporting role in the controversial musical “Emilia Pérez.” Her win marked the first time an actor with Dominican roots had won an Oscar.

“I am a proud child of immigrant parents, with dreams and dignity and hardworking hands,” she said through tears while accepting the award for supporting actress. “And I am the first American of Dominican origin to accept an Academy Award, and I know I will not be the last.”

Saldaña cemented her Oscar win while side-stepping criticisms of the film — namely regarding its portrayals of Mexicans and transgender people — as well as the scandal that surrounded “Emilia Pérez” co-star Karla Sofía Gascón, when her offensive tweets with anti-Muslim, anti-diversity and racist language resurfaced.

Vaa Vaathiyaar Movie Synopsis: Even as he keeps up an appearance of following in the footsteps MGR in front of his grandfather, a die-hard fan of the legend, Ramu is actually a corrupt cop, who’s helping in a mission to nab activists exposing the government. What happens when an incident triggers the Vaathiyaar in him? Vaa Vaathiyaar Movie Review: In his interviews about the film, director Nalan Kumarasamy repeatedly stressed on the fact that he planned Vaa Vaathiyaar as an attempt at recreating the old-school masala film in his own style. And that’s exactly what he delivers with his film. The simplicity of the MGR film formula meets the new-age-y plot device of Maaveeran in this fond, fun, funky throwback to the masala films of an earlier era. The film does take a while to get going with the beats of the initial set-up coming across as little too familiar. The narrative rhythm, too, is slightly off, with far too many songs popping up at frequent intervals. Though, it helps that Santhosh Narayanan’s songs are short and groovy. And the composer delivers a score that superbly elevates the emotional moments. But once we get into the main conflict, things perk up. An anonymous group of hacker-activists exposes a shootout plot by power broker Periasamy (Sathyaraj) and the chief minister (Nizhalgal Ravi) at a Sterlite-like protest. The government decides to nab them before they can cause further damage to a 142 million euro business deal. How does Ramu – a corrupt cop, who is keeping up a facade of being a do-gooder for the sake of his grandfather (Rajkiran, who has become the default casting choice for such well-meaning boomer roles), a die-hard MGR fan – gets involved in this and where does the OG Vaathiyaar figures in this scheme of things?Vaa Vaathiyaar shows that in this age of hyper-masculine action – and even romantic – films, it’s still possible to make a rousing commercial entertainer with a star without relying on guns and gratuitous bloodshed. The film’s action set-pieces have the hero taking on dozens of henchmen (and cops, too!), but it’s all done in swashbuckling MGR style. And in Karthi, it has an actor who is brave enough to take on a risky role, given the stature in which MGR is held by the Tamil people. Rather than merely mimicking him, which would have ended up as a spoof, the actor wonderfully captures the spirit of the legend’s onscreen image and creates moments that are genuinely heartfelt. Credit should also go to Nalan for finding the right pitch at which the actor should play these portions. While there are quite a few throwbacks to iconic MGR scenes, the filmmaker even succeeds in his modern take on the iconic song, Raajavin Paarvai Raaniyin Pakkam.The film would have been even better with a stronger villain. The film initially builds up Periyasamy to be ruthless and powerful, and with someone of Sathyaraj’s calibre playing this role, we expect more only to be deceived in the end. There’s also some build up to Nivas, a rival cop, who’s keen on nailing Ramu, but this arc, which could have added tension, is left incomplete after a while.That said, Nalan’s bold move to call back to MGR’s real-life hospitalisation and resurgence in the climax leaves the film on an emotional high.