barman, can go to work. After enduring repeated vicious tantrums from Arthur, Charlotte one evening dons a leather porno outfit and silences him with a striptease performance, before resuming her usual pious demeanour. Arthur is hospitalised next day. Gaëlle witnesses a farewell meeting between Dan and Nicole, and interpreting it as a betrayal by Dan, she flees back home to her brother. Lionel and Nicole both pack up to begin new lives. Dan resumes his place at the bar. Reception On its release, Private Fears in Public Places received an overwhelmingly positive response in the French press, whereas the enthusiasm of the public was more measured although respectably reflected at the box-office. British and American critics were widely sympathetic towards the film, but showed more reservations about the significance of the work. Comments by reviewers ranged from "disappointing" and "inconsequential", to "exquisite comedy drama", and "a masterpiece by any measure". One of the aspects noted by Anglo-American reviewers was the deliberate theatricality in the style of filming: "The film is entirely shot on sets that advertise their staginess - for example by the absence of ceilings revealed by the overhead shots, or their striking pastel colours (pinks, oranges and whites) and the repetition of frames filled with seemingly shifting partitions: etched glass, beads, ironwork, veils and so on." "...The superbly sustained aura of delicate artifice – this is a Paris where it’s always silently snowing, even, at one point, indoors – lends the characters’ repeated attempts to break free of their boxed-in lives the ritualistic magic of a fairy tale." This mise-en-scène was also linked to the themes of loneliness and separation: "Resnais is far more interested in the divisions that set us apart - whether it is the ill-constructed inner wall that bisects the first apartment visited by Nicole, the curtain that splits Lionel's bar in two, the partition that separates Thierry's office from Charlotte's, or the thematic oppositions of heaven and hell, men and women, piety and temptation." "All of [the characters] are in search of love and companionship. They're deeply lonely, though none is a natural loner, and their individual backgrounds, and in some cases the nature of their sexuality, are only hinted at. They live in a sort of emotional and social blur..." Another aspect of the film which was widely appreciated was the quality of the acting: "These consummate stage and film actors are one