Susan Granger’s review of “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” (Screen Media)
Settling into their new home in a staid, central Connecticut retirement community, serene, ever-adaptable Pippa Lee (Robin Wright Penn) is an accomplished hostess, proud mother of now-grown children and devoted wife to her much older, successful New York publisher husband, Herb Lee (Alan Arkin). But after Herb barely survives three serious heart attacks, 50 year-old Pippa realizes that sublimating her own needs over the years has allowed her to become a desperate housewife, living in a veritable “wrinkleberry.”
“I’ve had enough of being an enigma. I want to be known,” she despairingly declares in the midst of a subtle nervous breakdown.
Helping her on this journey to self-discovery is 35 year-old Chris Nadeau (Keanu Reeves), the tattooed, alienated son of her friend/neighbor, Dot (Shirley Knight). Disillusioned about being a priest, Chris works as the night clerk in a local convenience store and soon becomes Pippa’s confidante and lover.
“It’s just disappointing when someone turns out not to be the person you thought they were,” Dot ruefully remarks, having ‘caught’ them in Chris’s bed together.
Reinventing her novel of the same name, writer/director Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity,” “The Ballad of Jack and Rose”) is the daughter of legendary playwright Arthur Miller and wife of actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Aided by cinematographer Declan Quinn, she adroitly drifts back and forth through time, delineating various vulnerable periods in Pippa’s life, injecting unexpected humor into the melodrama while building to a disappointingly predictable conclusion.
As the titular heroine, Robin Wright Penn (“Forrest Gump,” “The Princess Bride”) remains inscrutable, while the quirky ensemble cast includes Zoe Kazan (granddaughter of Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller’s nemesis) and Ryan McDonald as Pippa’s children, Winona Ryder as Pippa’s neurotic friend, Blake Lively as young Pippa, Maria Bello as Pippa’s pill-popping mother, Monica Belluci as Herb’s first wife, Mike Binder as a longtime friend and Julianne Moore as a lesbian S&M photographer. The seven weeks of filming took place in New Milford and Danbury.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” is a low-key, shallow 6. But middle-aged angst has never looked lovelier.
