– variety.com
An Elevation Filmworks production in co-production with Plan B Entertainment. (International sales: IM Global, Los Angeles.) Executive producers, Jean Luc De Fanti, Jeff Sagansky, Brad Pitt. Produced by Lemore Syvan, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner. Directed, written by Rebecca Miller.
With: Robin Wright Penn, Keanu Reeves, Julianne Moore, Alan Arkin, Winona Ryder, Maria Bello, Monica Bellucci, Zoe Kazan, Ryan McDonald, Blake Lively, Robin Weigert.
Cardboard characters and severe problems of tone fatally flaw the awkward satirical relationship drama “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.” Fourth feature from helmer-writer Rebecca Miller (“The Ballad of Jack and Rose,” “Personal Velocity,” “Angela”) feels as schizophrenic as its eponymous heroine. “Reinvented” from Miller’s own novel, this star-studded tale of a 50ish married woman coming to terms with her troubled past reps something of a pig-in-a-poke for buyers who nabbed presales rights. While watchable, it’s not exactly a commercial property or, for that matter, arthouse material, and thus reps a marketing challenge unlikely to receive critical support.
The story opens with Pippa (Robin Wright Penn, with a perpetually placid smile), hosting a dinner party with Stepford wife-like perfection at the Connecticut retirement community she’s just moved into with much older publisher hubby Herb (Alan Arkin). As guests hail her as a model spouse, her inner voice confides, “I’ve lived more than one life.”
Introduced by Pippa’s voiceover, those other lives are revealed in a wannabe picaresque style and intercut with the Lees’ present-day existence in “Wrinklesbury.” We see Pippa growing up with manic, diet-pill-popping mother (Maria Bello) and running away at 16 (played by Blake Lively) to join lesbian aunt Trish (Robin Weigert) and Trish’s “dangerous” lover Kat (Julianne Moore), whose sideline taking S&M porn photos generates a chuckle.
Pippa’s memories of the past and the guilt she feels, particularly over an incident involving Herb’s wacko second wife (Monica Bellucci), start to create a “quiet nervous breakdown” in which she acts out repressed urges in her sleep. Luckily, she finds a confidante of sorts in her neighbor’s son Chris (Keanu Reeves).
While the film marks a change of pace from the intense seriousness of Miller’s earlier work, she never finds the dark comic edge that would make “Pippa” more satisfying viewing. Indeed, she never sustains any tone at all. The dialogue teeters from flat comedy to wince-worthy whimsy, with detours through blithe and earnest. Visual style, too, is all over the place.
Although Pippa declares, “I’ve had enough of being an enigma, I want to be known,” she’s not developed enough for viewers to really care. Likewise, the supporting characters are paper-thin. Of the actors, only Bello and Moore offer a suggestion of the over-the-top thesping the story seems to call for. Reeves (who offered phenomenal character work in “Thumbsucker”) hasn’t got much to do here other than look good with a big tattoo of Jesus on his chest.
Tech package seems a tad constricted. Lenser Declan Quinn and production designer Michael Shaw suggest the story’s multiple time periods, the camera drifting from one set to the next. Period music does a better job of evoking the era than the laughable costumes, hair and makeup.
More than one option(Person) Rebecca Miller
Director, Actor, Screenplay
(Person) Rebecca Miller
Extras Casting Assistant
(Person) Rebecca Miller
WardrobeMore than one option(Person) Ryan McDonald
Actor
(Person) Ryan McDonald
Rendering Artist, Visual Effects, XFX technician
(Person) ryan mcDonald
More than one option(Person) Michael Shaw
(Person) Mike Shaw
Camera (color, DV-to-35mm), Declan Quinn; editor, Sabine Hoffman; music supervisor, Linda Cohen; production designer, Michael Shaw; costume designer, Jennifer von Mayhauser; sound (Dolby Digital), Jeff Pullman. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (noncompeting), Feb. 8, 2009. Running time: 93 MIN.
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– screendaily.com
A grown-up love story that’s rambling, quirky and sharp-eyed about mid-life doldrums, Rebecca Miller’s cinematic adaptation of her own novel works largely because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. 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. Still, this is not a sure-fire commercial prospect even on the independent circuit. It comes on like a woman’s take on a Philip Roth novel (except with a sense of humour), and despite its oddball tone and upbeat ending could end up placing in the same $5 million region as Roth adaptations like Elegy or The Human Stain in the US. It may have better luck in urban markets abroad, especially in Europe
It starts in quiet observational mode, with DP Declan Quinn using long lenses to pick out the guests at a small dinner thrown by successful publisher Herb Lee (Arkin, in fine form) and his much younger wife Pippa (Wright Penn), soon after their move from New York to a sleepy Connecticut retirement community. Pippa doesn’t come across as a trapped wife at the beginning: she’s smart, ironic about their new home and seems to be in love with her grizzly-but-affectionate husband who has recently suffered three heart attacks.
But there’s something a little frozen about her smile, a little stilted about her movements. Soon enough she’s sleepwalking, catching herself on a closed-circuit camera as she raids the fridge for cake. At the same time we begin to explore Pippa’s unconventional past life through a series of flashbacks, pushed by some appetising costume and production design into a slightly heightened period style, that are seamlessly interleaved with the present-day action. We meet Pippa’s addled mother (the ever watchable Maria Bello), a benzadrine addict who blackmails her daughter emotionally with her wild mood swings, and follow the teenage Pippa (Lively) as she runs away from home, shacks up with a sympathetic aunt and is induced to take part in lesbian sado-masochistic photoshoots by her aunt’s bad-girl lover (Moore, having a whale of a time).
Meanwhile, in the present day, Pippa meets Chris (Reeves), a drifter who has come back to stay with his elderly parents in the retirement suburb, and the seeds of an exit strategy are planted.
The film’s structure is ‘crisis and release’, but it pans out in quite a loose and rangy way, partly because it takes Pippa a good while to realise that she’s having “a very quiet nervous breakdown”, partly because the backstory has a momentum of its own.
As well as Moore’s tasty cameo there’s a nice turn from Winona Ryder as Pippa’s fragile poet friend Sandra, a needy, pretty wreck with a tendency to burst into tears. Also good are Pippa and Herb’s grown-up twin children, mother’s boy Ben (McDonald) and father’s girl Grace (Kazan). An early scene in which all four go out to dinner in a restaurant nails the skewed family dynamic with great economy of means.
Production companies
Elevation Filmworks
Plan B Entertainment
International sales
Im Global
(1) 310 777 3590
Producers
Lemore Syvan
Dede Gardner
Jeremy Kleiner
Cinematography
Declan Quinn
Production design
Michael Shaw
Editor
Sabine Hoffman
Main cast
Robin Wright Penn
Keanu Reeves
Julianne Moore
Alan Arkin
Blake Lively
Winona Ryder
Maria Bello
Monica Bellucci
Zoe Kazan
Ryan McDonald
