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Cœurs

Private Fears in Public Places
Coeurs.jpg
Directed by Alain Resnais
Produced by Bruno Pésery
Written by Jean-Michel Ribes
Starring Sabine Azéma
Lambert Wilson
André Dussollier
Pierre Arditi
Laura Morante
Isabelle Carré
Claude Rich
Music by Mark Snow
Cinematography Éric Gautier
Edited by Hervé de Luze
Release date
  • 2 September 2006 (2006-09-02) (Venice Film Festival)
  • 22 November 2006 (2006-11-22) (France)
Running time
120 minutes
Country France
Language French
Budget $11 million
Box office $4 million

Private Fears in Public Places (French: Cœurs ("Hearts"), is a 2006 French film directed by Alain Resnais. It was adapted from Alan Ayckbourn's play Private Fears in Public Places. The film won several awards, including a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

For the second time in his career Alain Resnais turned to an Alan Ayckbourn play for his source material (having previously adapted another play for Smoking/No Smoking), and remained close to the original structure while transferring the setting and milieu from provincial England to the 13th arrondissement of Paris (contrary to his usual preference).

The film consists of over 50 short scenes, usually featuring two characters - occasionally three or just one. Scenes are linked by dissolves featuring falling snow, a device similar to one which Resnais previously used in L'Amour à mort (1984).

Several of Resnais's regular actors appear in the film (Arditi, Azéma, Dussollier, Wilson), and he was joined by his longstanding technical collaborators in design and editing, but he worked for the first time with cinematographer Éric Gautier.

The fictional TV programmes called "Ces chansons qui ont changé ma vie" which feature in the film were directed by Bruno Podalydès.

In contemporary Paris, six characters individually confront their emotional solitude as their lives intertwine. Dan (Lambert Wilson) is unemployed after being sacked from the army and spends his time drinking in a bar and telling his troubles to the longsuffering barman Lionel (Pierre Arditi). Dan's relationship with Nicole (Laura Morante) is disintegrating and through a newspaper advertisement he meets Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré), an attractive but insecure young woman who lives with her older brother Thierry (André Dussollier).


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