Private pain of a failing marriage
THE Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a most unusual and notable film written and directed by Rebecca Miller, who is the daughter of famed Jewish playwright Arthur Miller.
FILM REVIEW: THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE
REVIEWED BY DON PERLGUT
THE Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a most unusual and notable film written and directed by Rebecca Miller, who is the daughter of famed Jewish playwright Arthur Miller and married to British actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
Rebecca Miller is an accomplished creative artist in her own right: this film is her fourth directorial outing and is based on her novel (released in 2008) of the same name.
With a Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Personal Velocity (2001) under her belt, Miller specialises in character-driven psychological dramas and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee follows in this vein.
Pippa Lee -— born Pippa Sarkissian (with an Armenian father) -— is the much younger wife of Herb Lee, an ageing Jewish New York publisher.
The film opens as the two of them have moved from New York City to a pleasant but bland retirement community in suburban Connecticut (the state where Miller was born and grew up).
Pippa is superbly played by Robin Wright Penn in an, at times, anguished performance of a still-young woman uncertain about what to do in life now that one child is studying law and the other is working as a professional photographer.
She appears to be some 30 years younger than Herb, played by iconic Jewish actor Alan Arkin, who continues to take on challenging roles (he won an Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine in 2007).
After a number of heart attacks, Herb is wearily feeling his age and senses that he is moving closer to death.
The move to Connecticut has begun to bring out the stresses in the couple’s relationship and we slowly realise that Pippa is carrying some heavy emotional baggage.
This is revealed by a series of flashbacks to her youth with her rigid Christian minister father and mentally unstable mother (a powerful performance by Maria Bello) and to her young twenties of sex and drugs, leading to when Herb -— then married to someone else -— found her.
Strange things are now happening in the Lee household; is it Pippa’s sleepwalking or something more sinister?
Enter Chris Nadeau (Keanu Reeves), the son of the Lees’ neighbour, fleeing a bad relationship in California, and we know that something is due to happen between him and Pippa.
It’s an odd pairing: Reeves’ character is meant to be 35 years old, at least 10 years younger than Pippa (but Reeves is actually 45) -— and Penn is actually 43, younger than Reeves in real life.
But it works, in the strange universe that Rebecca Miller creates.
Miller’s directing style is a bit stilted and mannered, reminding me of David Mamet, another Jewish writer/director. Although the film ends hopefully, her psychological vision of upper middle-class suburban life in the USA is pretty bleak .
While there are some flashes of humour, Miller is much more concerned with plumbing the depths of Pippa’s “private lives”. There are quite a few of them — not quite The United States of Tara — but sitting in neighbouring territory, just without the levity.
The strength of this tight little film is powerful acting, with a cast that also includes Jewish actress Winona Ryder, Jewish actor/director Mike Binder (Reign Over Me) -— whose character Sam Shapiro is also clearly Jewish -— and Julianne Moore.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee leaves much unsaid, including the obvious fact that the daughter of a Christian minister has chosen an older Jewish man and father figure for her husband.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee premiered in Australia at last June’s Sydney Film Festival, but is not due to open in the USA until late November, making this Australian opening highly unusual.