A Private Life is a mildly funny, electrically portrayed, and quintessentially French—if deflationary, arbitrarily ended, and underwritten—”mystery.” While Jodie Foster and co. excel in their mostly sleazily suave characters, poor plotting and degrading messaging ultimately dilute this Life journey’s impact just enough to sour it. Perhaps some lives should remain Private affairs.

An American psychologist who takes on patients in modern-day Paris, Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster), finds unusual traces of foul play after the supposed suicide of a patient named Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira) and decides to investigate. Unveiling aspects of Paula’s life she didn’t know before, like a strained relationship with her cheating husband, Simon (Mathieu Amalric), Lilian begins to uncover bits of her own life. New ways of living and healing, and fresh perspectives on herself and her family relationships—with her son, Julien Haddad-Park (Vincent Lacoste), and ex-husband, Gabriel Haddad (Daniel Auteuil), with whom she still sleeps—leak through what’s supposed to be a professional investigation. As she inches towards truth, her self-perception changes for her benefit—unfortunately, accosting audiences in the meantime.

When I first started this movie, I asked my co-viewer not five minutes in (by which time it had already been revealed that Lilian couldn’t guide or comfort), “Is this movie basically about how she’s [Lilian] terrible at her job?” out of pure disbelief. Unfortunately, I wasn’t wrong, and that’s frustrating. Everything in A Private Life feels like it should work, but doesn’t, mainly because everything gradually thins down to that answer. Foster, Auteuil, and everyone else involved are self-deprecating, breezy yet not without integrity, and emotionally captivating. Crisp camera work captures a colorful Paris of blue skies and chic, French outfits, contrasting the morose reality Lilian faces with Parisian perfection. Themes of self-confidence, antisemitism, emotional intelligence, and psychological self-imprisonment repeat, offering a sexual openness backdropped by a kinda-love story in the midst of a potential murder possibly caused by Lilian herself. But none of that pays off; in trying to remain Frenchly nonchalant and true to its weak ending, A Private Life feels like a phoned-in narrative.

Everything intriguing about A Private Life is reduced to something that is forcedly meaningful for Lilian. For example, towards Private’s beginning, Lilian is told Paula tried hypnotherapy shortly before suicide, so Lilian indulges in the same. Transported into a red-carpeted master staircase that seems to represent her memory bank, she steps into a memory. She’s suddenly a male violinist in a 1930s opera hall, where Paula is “his” mistress and Paula’s then-husband—played by her current-day one as well—becomes jealous. Before he can do anything, though, a Nazi brigade led by Lilian’s own son, Julien, storms in demanding papers, shooting Paula and forcing Lilian and the rest to flee. This vision could’ve been an interesting jumping-off point for several ideas, such as a time-travel mystery about antisemitism or an unspoken or symbolic representation of her current circumstances and how she struggles to connect emotionally. Instead, this Nazi dream is used to reveal the family as Jewish and as a topic for Lilian to bring up at a family dinner.

Borderline drunk with her ex-husband, her son, his wife, and her grandson, Lilian rambles on about what she “learned” under hypnosis, explaining that their supposed past lives are the cause of the lack of love between Lilian and her son: “We’ve named things [the dream, Julien’s role], we’ve put them into words. I’ll be able to love you [Julien] like I couldn’t before,” she pleads. The meltdown doesn’t lead to anything further, other than leaving a stain on Lilian’s credibility as an analyst, which she eventually links to her personal relationship issues. Even so, putting these things “into words” the way she did, let alone what she put into words, is just plain stupid. From France to the U.S., it’s hard to imagine any therapist being this delusional. Lilian couldn’t love her son for his whole life because… he may have been a Nazi in a past life, even though current-day Julien makes no such supremacist remarks or is associated with Nazis or neo Nazis in any way? Though Julien and Gabriel eventually confront the connection, the dream’s role in reality is never questioned and is poorly addressed—much like the rest of the film, so long as it all otherwise connects to Lilian’s emotional hangups. As the mystery lightens rather than intensifies and the characters lull rather than grow, A Private Life increasingly dulls, regardless of the cast’s excellent acting. It’s difficult to say that Lilian earns her way forward, as simply learning how following through on the words “I hear you. I’m here” can be the difference between suicide and saving a life isn’t exactly difficult. Again, that’s supposed to be the substance of her career; it’s more annoyingly surprising than uplifting that it took her this long to figure it out.

Thus, A Private Life is a bit of a letdown, mystery-wise, though not without style points and a helluva case for Jodie Foster’s talent (both in French and in acting). The film is at times funny, Frenchly open-minded, and smoothly produced, but it squanders its own intrigue with an unrealistically vain central character. For Jodie Foster fans, French film lovers, and mystery-comedy die-hards, there may be just enough to quench thirst, but for everyone else, A Private Life can remain forever Private.

Opens Friday, 1/30 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre, Capitol Theatre Arlington, and AMC Boston Common