MOVIE REVIEW
'The Private Lives of Pippa Lee': Robin Wright Penn shines as a woman finally finding herself
Published: December 11, 2009, 12:30 am
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Rebecca Miller’s “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” is a piece of smart filmmaking for grown-ups — well-acted, witty and expertly executed, and a coming out for Robin Wright Penn (she recently dropped the “Penn” but is credited in the movie as Wright Penn) as a leading lady.
THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE
Three and a half stars (Out of four)
STARRING: Robin Wright Penn, Alan Arkin, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder
DIRECTOR: Rebecca Miller
RUNNING TIME: 98 minutes
RATING: R for sexual situations, brief nudity and profanity
THE LOWDOWN: A middle-aged woman finally decides to be herself.
Penn is getting award buzz for her performance as Pippa Lee, an attractive, married mother of two grown children who appears to be on the verge of . . . something.
When we first met her on screen, she was going to live happily ever after as the Princess Bride. Here, her character is beginning to feel adrift in her marriage to a much older, well-to-do publisher, Herb Lee (Alan Arkin, perfectly cast), especially after they move from Manhattan to a retirement condo in Connecticut when he suffers his third major heart attack.
Despite hosting the occasional dinner party (academic Cornel West has a cameo at one meal), the Lees have a hard time adjusting to life in the incredibly slow lane.
When she is toasted by an admirer as a “mystery, and an enigma,” we slide into Pippa’s mind as she comes to the realization, “I’ve had enough of being an enigma. I want to be known.”
Penn and Arkin play off one another in endearing fashion. You sense that, whatever problems the couple have, it has less to do with their affection for one another than the stage of life in which they find themselves. Herb’s mortality has come to the fore and he is, as he says, “tasting the dirt in his mouth.”
Pippa, on the other hand, is not. She’s 30 years younger and still waiting to find herself, to see who she is when she isn’t responding to someone else.
No wonder she is intrigued by the arrival of a nearby elderly couple’s son, played by Keanu Reeves, a young man set adrift by divorce and an apparent lack of any ambition.
Odd things begin to happen, and Miller deftly weaves in the back story of how the former Pippa Sarkissian got to this point. She starts with her childhood, ruled by the 1960s mood swings of her mother (Maria Bello) that are choreographed by the Dexedrine Mommy pops a least four times a day.
Pippa — whose own grip on reality may be slipping a notch — recalls that her mother was admired for her household energy and creativity, noting, “I was the only one who knew she was secretly pretending to be in a commercial most of the time.”
Mother wasn’t the only one pretending. With Blake Lively as young Pippa and Penn picking up the role about the time she marries Herb, Miller unwraps Pippa’s psyche with clues subtle and overt: How she played dress-up and pretended in photos for her mother; how she did the same for her aunt’s lesbian lover (Julianne Moore), but in a soft-core bondage sort of way. And then, how Pippa started posing herself, in the role of guilt-stricken wife and mother.
Penn, 43, who has gone through midlife changes of her own in the past year, brings a disarming naturalness to Pippa. Whether reassuring her death-fearing husband or taking in the confidences of her needy younger friend Sandra (Winona Ryder, in some of the film’s most comic scenes), she keeps her cards close while the tiny cracks start to open under Pippa’s feet.
It’s a brave, funny and believable performance. Surrounded by a stellar cast, it makes “Pippa Lee” a woman worth knowing.•
e-mail:mmiller@buffnews.com
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