The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee

From all outward appearances, Pippa Lee (Robin Wright Penn) leads a charmed existence. An anchor of feminine serenity, she is the devoted wife of an accomplished publisher (Alan Arkin) 30 years her senior, the proud mother of two grown children, a trusted friend and confidant. But as Pippa dutifully follows her husband to a new life in a staid Connecticut retirement community, her idyllic world and the persona she has built over the course of her marriage will be put to the ultimate test. Adapted from writer-director Rebecca Miller’s novel of the same name, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee presents the complex portrait of the many lives behind a single name.
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TIFF: Does anyone really know Pippa Lee? Ostensibly a well-off model wife, mother and friend, Pippa wears each of her masks just a little loosely. Played to perfection by Robin Wright Penn, Pippa is a woman for our times. In this smart study of life at the top of the social food chain, writer-director Rebecca Miller adapts her own novel in a wrenching yet often hilarious look at one enigmatic woman.

Pippa (Wright Penn) and her publisher husband, Herb (Alan Arkin), have just moved to Connecticut following Herb's heart attack. Accustomed to the creative whirl of New York, Pippa adjusts slowly to her beige-toned suburban home and the slower pace of small-town life. Regular dinners with their friends Sam (Mike Bender) and Sandra (Winona Ryder) provide some reprieve, but it is not until their neighbours' recently divorced son Chris (Keanu Reeves) moves in next door that Pippa begins to rediscover facets of herself that have long been in hibernation. As she cares for an older husband who appears to be drifting farther and farther away, unsettling memories from her past swell up and threaten to smother her. Furthermore, strange incidents add to the growing tension in the home: someone has been sleepwalking, indulging in messy late-night snacks and taking the car out for nocturnal spins.

Pippa Lee is the story of a woman who has faced many challenges but is still trying to figure herself out. Taking us from Pippa's troubled years growing up in the fifties and sixties to her seemingly more peaceful life in the present day, Miller's narrative traverses both the highs of falling in love and the crises arising from drug abuse and family trauma. Blake Lively is at once coquettish and forlorn as the teenaged Pippa, more than holding her own among a cast of veterans, and Julianne Moore gives a standout performance as a sexy, no-nonsense photographer. But it is Wright Penn who adeptly carries the film, bringing Pippa to life with a nuanced range of emotions and a subtle yet irresistible comic presence.

Miller lends both a zany sense of humour and an incontestable talent for storytelling to this tale of an uncompromising free spirit. Though Pippa may already have survived her youth, we learn that coming of age is a process that never stops.

Rebecca Miller was born in Roxbury, Connecticut, and studied art at Yale University. She began her career as an actor and performed in several feature films, including Regarding Henry (91), Consenting Adults (92) and Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (94). She has directed the films Angela (95), Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (02), which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, The Ballad of Jack and Rose (05) and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (09).
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Larry Richman: Written and directed by Rebecca Miller from her own book, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a complex, multi-layered life story of a woman trying to survive her checkered past. Its stellar cast makes this film a joy -- Robin Wright Penn is extraordinary as the titular character, while Keanu Reeves, Blake Lively, and Winona Ryder truly shine in supporting roles. But The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is, most of all, a vehicle for the legendary Alan Arkin as Pippa's husband Herb Lee. He's at his best yet.

The script is about 5/50 drama and comedy so it's hard to pin it down either way. But that's what real life is, isn't it? The art and costume direction are superb with great care taken to ensure that each of Pippa Lee's "lives" has its own unique color palette and sets to match. Keeping it all together is a wonderful recurring musical theme and sweet score. There are a number of clever transitions between sets and time periods which, as I discovered during the Q&A, were not done with computers but "in-camera." As an aficionado of the craft of filmmaking, these set tricks blew me away.

True to form, at least for me this week, the film actually did have a Q&A with the filmmakers despite being a second showing. Bravo. A Screen Media release, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee will definitely hit cinemas soon, and I predict a box office hit.