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 Director: Rebecca Miller
Cast: Robin Wright Penn, Keanu Reeves, Alan Arkin, Blake Lively,
Maria Bello, Mike Bender, Winona Ryder, Julianne Moore
Run Time: 100 minutes
Country: USA
Year: 2009
Language: English
Rating: 14A (Sexually suggestive scene)
Does anyone really know the eponymous heroine of The
Private Lives of Pippa Lee, a Gala Presentation at the Toronto
International Film Festival®? 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 (White
Oleander, The Singing Detective), 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 and her publisher husband, Herb (Alan Arkin,
Little Miss Sunshine, Sunshine Cleaning), 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, (Reign Over Me) and Sandra (Winona Ryder,
Mr. Deeds, A Scanner Darkly) provide some reprieve, but
it is not until their neighbours’ recently divorced son Chris
(Keanu Reeves, A Scanner Darkly, The Lake House) 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.
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.
“An across-the-board solid cast backs up Robin Wright
Penn’s enjoyable central performance which, like much of
the film, is believable without being entirely naturalistic.” – Lee Marshall, Screen International
Reviews: www.rottentomatoes.com/m/private_lives_of_pippa_lee
Official site www.pippalee.com
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