THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE
At one moment during my second viewing of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, it hit me...this was Kelly. You see, I used to love to tell this story about Kelly, a girl I knew in New York City in the 80s back when we were all sort of meandering, figuring out what we were going to be when we grew up. She was a fun-loving, bar hopping party girl, blond, really cute. One day she met a 57 year old businessman with a “driver” and when I saw her about 10 years later she had become a perfect looking, Chanel suited wife.
Rebecca Miller says that her novel, from which she has transformed into a film, was inspired by a similar meeting with a once wild, now much tamed friend. In the hands of Robin Wright and Blake Lively as the older and younger versions of Pippa, we get a sense of how someone who is lost grabs for a lifeboat when it appears, be it an older man or even a straight career. Here the story is told by almost seamlessly melding past and present, using flashbacks that are unannounced.
When we first meet her she has a plastic, placid look that made me wonder if she had been completely hollowed out. She is looking on at a dinner party as her husband, Herb’s (Alan Arkin) pompous friend Sam (Mike Bender) holds forth on something or other. Pippa’s not really paying attention and soon we’re invited into her daydream neurosis that starts with an introduction to her manic, pill-popping mother Suky, played to perfection by Maria Bello. The scenes with Suky scrubbing her floors and referring to the bottle of Dexadrine as “her medicine” are priceless representations of that “Feminine Mystique” Ms. Friedan wrote about way back in the 60s. Pippa makes the sane choice of climbing out the window and into the hands of her aunt’s lesbian novelist lover Kat (Julianne Moore), but she doesn’t last long there. She’s partying, sleeping around and crashing in artists’ lofts when she meets the much older Herb.
In the present Pippa is living in a retirement community and Herb has already had 3 heart attacks. Things start to change when she meets a neighbor’s “half-baked” son, Jesus tattoed, Chris (Keanu Reeves.) He’s lost too, but analytical, sarcastic and not at all fooled by Pippa’s shiny surface. It’s nice to see Reeves as an extremely low key grown up, referencing some of that nuttiness of Bill and Ted, with the experience of sadness and disappointment woven in.
In fact, Miller, daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and husband of Daniel Day Lewis, put this adaptation of her novel in the hands of an exceptionally skilled group of actors that includes all of the above plus, Shirley Knight, Winona Ryder and Monica Bellucci. She has succeeded in crafting a quiet portrait of what ‘s underneath the surface of a perfectly seeming housewife. It’s got a bit of the old picaresque, Tom Jones about it, with lots of funny and unpredictable outbursts, as when Pippa advises her friend Sandra what it takes to get a husband, by surveying a couple of less than ideal prospects in a restaurant. Miller’s got some sharp and insightful dialogue, no long speeches, just straight and to the point, as when Herb chastises Pippa for making him feel old and she flatly responds, “But Herb, you are old.”
Thank Brad Pitt and his Plan B for helping to finance such a small and thoroughly enjoyable project. And thanks to Miller for continuing to produce such unique, character driven films.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is now in theaters.
Written and directed by Rebecca Miller from her novel of the same name; produced by Lemore Sylvan; Director of Photography, Declan Quinn; edited by Sabine Hoffman. Released by Screen Media Films.
With: Robin Wright (Pippa Lee); Blake Lively (Young Pippa); Alan Arkin (Herb Lee); Keanu Reeves (Chris Nadeau); Suky Sarkissian (Maria Bello); Zoe Kazan (Grace Lee); Winona Ryder (Sandra Dulles); Mike Binder (Sam Shapiro); Monica Bellucci (Gigi Lee); Ryan McDonald (Ben Lee); Julianne Moore (Kat) and Shirley Knight (Dot.)
