Stream it now The Private Lives of Pippa Lee 2009

 

Life is a journey filled with surprises and even when you turn 55 years old the story is yet still only beginning to unfold is what we learn from this dark comedy/dramedy. Filled with a terrific cast, and lead by Robin Wright Penn who gives a remarkably good performance, this is a film filled with promise.

We have less and less people going to movies these days, yet more and more films coming out every week. Odd world, this one. In the middle of this craziness, i make a habit out of trying to guess which ones, among the avalanche of films in catalog, will be worth it. Some are easy choices, because they have people i care about participating. Others are pure chance (i like to call it intuition). This is such. Oh, it has Robin Wright, who impressed me in my re viewings of Breaking and Entering (not so much the first time i saw it, i have to rewrite my comment on that one). Still, this was a shot in the dark. But sometimes, fate and some ability to predict make an experience worthwhile, even discarding its contents. So, I got watch this one in a totally empty last session medium projection room. It was great. And the film is about surrounding multiple conceptions of loneliness, of spiritual emptiness, of empty goals. This film is a valid gift. It was given to me, just to me, i was alone only until the film begun.

We have a central life, of a woman who seems to affect the lives of all the people that surround her. Unwillingly. She gets what happens to her, not what she predicts. That is both her doom and the brightness in her. To play this woman, the director (herself a woman) chose a vivid and interesting young woman, Lively, mirrored in a very interesting person, Wright Penn, whose major quality as a performer is in her face. So we start the film on her face, in extreme close-up. Her expressions will tell us all we want to know about where the character stands in those moments. Two types of acting, one external, by Lively, another one internal and focused, by Wright. So, in perfect coherence with the idea of a woman who apparently erased herself out of true existence, true life, to become the shadow of someone who at a tragic moment in existence saw his life bound to her. Sensitive choices.

The big question here might be of self referential nature. Empty lives means those that create nothing? After all, Pippa feels the same kind of frustration her husband did, when he realized he wouldn't become a writer. Several times that question comes to mind, notably when Sam asks the young Pippa what is her creative business, to which she just answers she works in a clothing store. Ultimately, the creative light that surrounds Pippa is herself, as a subject, and as the dynamo to her surrounding lives, someone who stirs and perturbs. That's what Julianne Moore's character is there for, to highlight Pippa as the subject, not the maker of art. Incidentally Moore is perfect because she herself is hardly a puppet in the middle of the art where she moves. She plays important roles as maker of art herself. Self reference, again.

We have the mother, unhealthy, drug addict, and obsessed with her daughter, we have Sam, always in love, we have Arkin's character, who materializes in Pippa the frustration of his artless existence. We have Bellucci's character, herself a competing central subject, who can't stand being replaced.

Three stars, out of four.

Pippa is supposed to be a 55 year old woman, but is played by a cute 43 year old. Poor. The movie is superficial, and is filled with senseless circles of infidelity. How about some shock value to make sure it sells - add some SM and lesbian scenes. Went to see a film on Valentine's day with my spouse. Saw a stinker!

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Great cast and even Keanu did a decent job here. Winona was adorably distraught and funny. It kinda feels like this is a series of little moments in life (with a few big ones) that make all the difference. Pippa is just starting to unravel into the person she always wished she could be.

More Films like this even is flawed is better than Avatar

Engaging, literate, surprising...well put together. Is this a woman's film? My partner loved it, so that's one man. Not sure I get the lukewarm response. Everything on the big screen does not have to be BIG & LOUD.

a little messy, funny but too slow paced in my opinion.

Okay Movie Great Acting and what to say about the cast well.. EXTRAVAGANT!

This movie is all about Robin Wright-Penn who gives a touching performance as a woman who moves to a geriatric residential community with her husband , Herb a charming,aging publisher played by Alan Arkin. The transition causes Pippa to reflect and as she states "have a quite nervous breakdown" which involves sleepwalking and seeking the attention of a equally tormented soul played somewhat stiffly by Keanu Reeves.
Rebecca Miller takes us back and forth through Pippa's life. At times the transitions feel quite choppy. We meet her inconsistent, moody pill popping mother(Maria Bello) who like most parents has an enormous impact on Pippa's self worth and futue decisions.
Winona Ryder is hysterical as Pippa's emotionally labile friend.
Going in I was expecting a Lifetime movie, what I got was a great performance by Penn and a movie that never really commits as either a dark comedy or drama. Then again who says a movie must commit?

"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" is a thoughtful, yet insubstantial, character study that stretches its sleepwalking metaphor much too thin. Like its title character whose best moments come in surprisingly frank outbursts, the movie fails to live up to its potential, even with a very good cast.(And I can think of no better description of Keanu Reeves than "half baked.") The movie starts shortly after Pippa(Robin Wright Penn) moves to a retirement community in Connecticut after her older husband Herb(Alan Akin), a publisher, has suffered a series of serious heart attacks. That made me wonder since I thought most people would head to warmer climes for their retirement if they could but Pippa who selflessly takes care of everything at least unconsciously moved back to near where she grew up as part of a large family with a pill popping mother(Maria Bello). So, with much more free time on her hands than she normally would, with two grown children out of her hair, Pippa has started to rethink her life up to this point which on the surface might be a traditional path of first being cared for, then having children of her own and finally taking care of somebody in their old age. The difference in a Freudian twist is that it is a husband, not a father, she is caring for. So, in all of her life, she never had the time to truly discover herself until now.