Private Fears in Public Places /

Private Fears in Public Places is the English-language title of Cœurs (tr. "Hearts"), 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