"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" is a movie with good bloodlines.
It is written and directed by Rebecca Miller whose father just happened to be Arthur Miller, along with Tennesee Williams, our greatest playwright -- think "Death of a Salesman" and "The Crucible" for starters.
The director is also married to Daniel Day Lewis, one of the five greatest living movie actors, not mere movie stars, trodding the video and celluloid boards nowadays.
Throw in the star Miller wanted to carry her film, Robin Wright Penn, surround her with a great supporting cast: Alan Arkin, Blake Lively, Julianne Moore and add one of my favorites, back from the career dead, Winona Ryder, whose amazing turn here should garner her a best-supporting actress nomination, and even the presence of Keanu Reeves can't sink this almost-great film.
'Pippa Lee' tells the story of a woman who seems to have almost everything, is a beacon of strength for hubby (Arkin), neighbors and her two spoiled adult children. But, as in life itself, all is not as it seems on the surface. Pippa's sudden move to the 'burbs with her aging and quietly rational husband, has left her clawing the table cloth. It's life at the crossroads.
Wright-Penn inhabits Pippa so convincingly that you will take her journey of self-discovery as if you're looking over her shoulder. And in flashback scenes, Pippa, played by Lively, wanders through life shielded by both insecurity and bravado.
Miller based the film on her own novel of the same name, published in the United Kingdom in 2008, but she wasn't trapped by her own previous textual brilliance.
According to Miller, the film is a reinvention, not an adaption. "There was so much in the well that I wanted to keep going. I wanted to see it in a different dimension. I wanted to give it to actors and see what they could do with it.
For me it is just a deeper and deeper search into the same terrain.... In small ways the plot isn't (even) the same," Miller explained.
'Pippa Lee' also seems, to a male reviewer, like a message from the other side of the battle of the sexes. It is a woman's movie without the pettiness that those types of films sometimes exhibit.
It is successful as art and as a plotted story which keeps making the viewer ask: "What's next?"
Thumbs up if that phrase isn't already taken.
Take your girlfriend or wife and gain points with her, or, if you are a wife or girlfriend, take your hubby or beau and let Miller try to help you make him see.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, 100 minutes short or long, depending on your viewpoint, opens Friday Dec. 18 at a Landmark Theater (tentatively The Harvard Exit on East Roy at Harvard). For more info call (206-781-5755.)[[In-content Ad]]
