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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE The fantasy fulfillment of an older man romancing a younger, adoring woman is a familiar film genre, usually made by aging male directors. In The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, writer/director Rebecca Miller takes the woman’s perspective to both mock and sympathize with the old-fashioned notion of The Great Man’s Wife. Compared to her earlier stories and her film adaptation of some of them in Personal Velocity, Miller’s novel has similarities to the book that Pippa Lee’s 80-year-old literary publisher Herb Lee (Alan Arkin) cynically champions as a real find: “It’s a cash cow, summer reading, an Easy Read of Quality—lowbrow for highbrows.” Not that it’s for us intellectuals, he reassures his serene wife, Pippa (Robin Wright Penn), 30 years his junior. Despite heart problems, Herb continues to work as the couple adjust to their quiet new life in what he mocks as “Wrinkle Village,” though the Connecticut setting doesn’t make clear they have moved from New York City to a retirement village and not just a typical aging suburb that seems unchanged since Mad Men days. Her beatific smile and social ease hide Pippa’s tumultuous thoughts—the dislocation has set her off down memory lane, and to caustically narrate the extended flashbacks. As the only daughter among four brothers, she was in a suffocating relationship with her mother, Suky Sarkissian (Maria Bello, in a quite raw performance). Suky can only get through her days as a pastor’s wife by popping diet pills. (The Rolling Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper” was probably too expensive for the soundtrack). High on amphetamines, Suky poses little Pippa like a doll in ever more surreal fantasy settings, preparing her to be a docile object of desire. Pippa grows into a sultry and sullen adolescent (Blake Lively), who challenges her mother’s addiction. Her runaway rebellion to the big city lands her in the almost laughable lesbian lair of her aunt Trish (Robin Weigert), whose assertive lover Kat (Julianne Moore, imitating Cate Blanchett imitating Bob Dylan in I’m Not There) secretly photographs her in ever more erotic and abusive poses. She meets Herb at his sleek Hamptons beach house when she tags along with the ragtag bohemian protégés of his voluptuous first wife, socialite Gigi (Monica Bellucci). If you had an ick reaction to young Carey Mulligan in bed with Peter Sarsgaard in Lone Scherfig‘s An Education, you will be even less comfortable when a naked Lively lies atop Arkin. Decades later, Gigi’s extravagant revenge for the affair still haunts Pippa’s subconscious through strange dreams and alarming bouts of sleepwalking, which brings her into contact with her neighbor’s “half-baked” son, Chris (Keanu Reeves). (Any hint of the book’s scandal about him being much younger is lost because Wright Penn is actually only two years older than Reeves.) Pippa’s emotions begin percolating through her reserve, and her rebellion is fun to watch. With an emerging acerbic attitude, Wright Penn lands her verbal punches quietly, but with great relish. The
exaggerated, absurdist scenes have the most bite, but the
mother/daughter reconciliation theme is lost amidst the scenes from a
marriage. Perhaps the off-screen ironies are unintentional, but the
real lives of the cast and director add additional fizz: Wright Penn, as the
soon-to-be-divorcing
wife of a famous man; the director, the wife of a celebrated actor as well
as the daughter of writer Arthur Miller; and Zoe Kazan, who plays Pippa’s
daughter Grace, the granddaughter of his nemesis Elia Kazan. Otherwise,
Pippa Lee would pretty much be an East Coast intellectual version
of
Gigi Levangie’s
Hollywood-set The Starter Wife and its satirical TV movie
adaptation, but with a woefully underused ensemble.
Nora Lee Mandel
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