The Private Lives of Pippa Lee: Review By harveycritic

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE

Screen Media Films

Reviewed for MovieWeb by Harvey Karten

Grade: B

Directed by: Rebecca Miller

Written By: Rebecca Miller, from her novel

Cast: Robin Wright Penn, Alan Arkin, Blake Lively, Maria Bello, Keanu Reeves, Monica Bellucci, Julianne Moore, Winona Ryder, Mike Binder, Zoe Kazan, Ryan McDonald

Screened at: Park Avenue, NYC, 11/5/09

Opens: November 27, 2009

When you see that 45-year-old guy zipping around with a Porsche convertible wearing aviator glasses and some cool gloves, the first thing that may come to your mind (outside of thinking that he's a rich dude) is that he is going through a mid-life crisis. That's not such a bad thing. What's more serious is an identity crisis, particularly if a person is 50 years old, looks at her life and says, "This is not me." This is OK for an adolescent but to image that you've wasted a good part of your life in a lie? Bad news. This is exactly the problem facing the title character, Pippa Lee, who at the age of fifty is considered by at least one of her friends as an enigma, a puzzle, someone he cannot figure out. One critic with a review on rotten tomatoes complains that she is told that Pippa Lee is an enigma, but she's nothing but a cipher. That's the whole point! A cipher has no personality separate from those around her, so she absorbs and becomes whatever her significant others are.

Rebecca Miller's novel about this woman and her circle, which she adapted for the screenplay, directs her team in what could be considered a chick-flick but not the type of chick-flick so popular with Sundance audiences. These are middle-aged people, at least one even older than that: if a twenty-something audience can get involved, more power to 'em. "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" is somewhat captivating but achieves its merits chiefly from its stellar work by the ensemble, and in fact one would not be surprised to see "Pippa Lee" considered by awards guilds for ensemble quality.

The story revolves around a perplexed Pippa, played by Robin Wright Penn, whom we all know as the most beautiful actress of her generation. Pippa has been married to a successful publisher, Herb Lee (Alan Arkin), who is thirty years her senior and whose previous wife (Monica Bellucci) had committed suicide. (Aside: is that the kind of man you'd want to marry?) She lives in a gorgeous Connecticut home but from a conversation she has with her husband indicates that moving from the city pad that they had just sold was a mistake. (Aside 2: Reminds me of the cartoon in the Nov. 9th New Yorker magazine which finds a couple in the countryside looking at the changing colors of autumn leaves, the leaves spelling out "Go back to New York.") She swallows prescription drugs, is depressed, and told by her psychiatrist that she needs a hobby. Why is all this happening to her? As any Freudian psychoanalyst will tell you, check out her early relationship with her mom.

Her mom is nuts, all right. In the carefully photographed backstory Maria Bello burns up the screen as Suky Sarkissian, high on speed, who spends her time vacuuming aggressively, failing to get to know her teen daughter, young Pippa (played by Blake Lively). When Young Pippa bolts from her mother's home to stay with her aunt Trish (Robin Weigert) only to find her in a lesbian relationship with the hip Kat (Julianne Moore), she becomes more confused about her role in life.

Keanu Reaves clocks in nicely as Chris Nadeau, one guy who excites the 50-year-old Pippa after her staid existence with her ageing husband, while her daughter, Grace Lee (Zoe Kazan) has no time for her mother as she's circling the world as a journalist. The obligatory dinner scene near the opening sets the tone, particularly introducing Sam Shapiro (Mike Binder), a novelist who would have been the right age and the right guy all along. It's a pleasure to see real film used as opposed to digital.

Rated R. 93 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online