Resnais's Return as Storyteller

An older fan's first reaction to news of a film from 84-year-old living legend Alain Resnais is often surprise. But lately, so is the second reaction: He directed what? After decades of mind-boggling works about time and memory, replete with modernist feats of fragmentation, the French master has turned decisively to theatrical sources. His last film, "Not on the Lips," was a spirited and precise adaptation of a rascally 1925 operetta last filmed in 1931; his latest, "Private Fears in Public Places," adapts a minor stage comedy by contemporary British mainstay Alan Ayckbourn.

The results are modest but deceptively simple. The rueful story of six melancholic Parisians has such preternatural clarity and immaculate artifice that one might suspect the formalist director of hiding something up his sleeve. But when you survey other directors for a similarly tidy feel, you come up with another oldster: the Portuguese nonagenarian Manoel de Oliveira. A late-period voice can be mistaken as plain; Mr. Resnais is simply letting the autumnal mood seep in with an experienced serenity.

The 40- and 50-somethings of "Private Fears" languish, not entirely unhappily, in various lovelorn cul-desacs. Meek, silver-haired realtor Thierry (André Dussollier) takes a shine to his devout colleague, Charlotte (Sabine Azéma), whom he imagines might secretly share the sentiment. Thierry shares a flat with his younger, lambent-eyed sister, Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré), a serial personal-ad expectant whose dates rarely show. The siblings care for each other with fussy familial warmth, but you can sense how each is stifled.

Intertwined with this trio is a stalled couple and a mournful bartending bachelor. Dan (Lambert Wilson), a career soldier booted out of the service, drowns his unemployment in drink and dodges the carping of his beautiful wife, Nicole (Laura Morante). They're moving, seemingly for lack of momentum, and cheerful Thierry is their broker. Meanwhile, Dan's regular bartender, Lionel (Pierre Arditi), hires Thierry's co-worker Charlotte as an elder sitter by night. Lionel lives with his irascible bedridden father (Claude Rich), a permanently off-screen presence who curses and leers at Charlotte mercilessly.

In short two-person scenes (not dissimilar from the play's structure), the characters make their tentative steps toward revealing themselves, as the title promises. Charlotte lends Thierry a tape of her favorite television program, but to his flustered excitement, it appears to also contain footage of Charlotte gyrating half-nude. Accident or not? And anyway, how exactly does a meek, pining man broach the subject?

Dan, who separates from Nicole by mutual agreement, finds that his first blind date is with Gaëlle. These two decent folk hit it off, hungry for each other's attention. Lionel bears witness from behind the bar but remains absorbed by his private travails. With a little prodding, he unburdens to Charlotte and haltingly drudges up a painful past of simmering paternal resentment and obscure romantic loss.

"Private Fears" unfolds with a lightness that belies the sadness at its core. Mr. Resnais's gingerly placed cameras frame a world of eye-catching but muted colors, from the hollow plastic-neon contours of the hotel bar to the frosted dividers that subdue light in the real estate office. The whole movie takes place indoors, but it is snowing in Paris throughout, and snowfall fades out one scene into the next, making the world look like one fragile globe.

Mr. Resnais's veteran cast brings out the characters' quiet desperation with restraint and grace. Most have worked with the director before (nearly the entire lineup was present for his experimental 1983 drama "Life Is a Bed of Roses"). The craggy-faced Mr. Wilson is a standout, bluff yet tender, while Mr. Arditi probably delivers the best scene when his character finally opens up to Charlotte in an almost unbearably delicate moment of hesitant connection. Perhaps the only weak spot comes with Ms. Azéma's enigma of a character, more the fault of the adaptation than the actress.

With "Private Fears," Mr. Resnais reconfirms his ability to switch up approaches and stake out his own territory. Perhaps nothing summarizes his restless thoughtfulness better than the span between the measured artifice of this movie and the splintered structure of his 1963 masterpiece "Muriel," which was revived this past week at the Museum of Modern Art. "Private Fears" may be a comparatively minor work, but it shows the director to be just as sharp and controlled as ever.