The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee is a chick flick in the very best sense of that sadly devalued term. Populated by a galaxy of actresses and anchored by a virtuoso Robin Wright Penn, it is a thoroughly feminine, feminised affair; a privileged peek into the girl’s locker room. Indeed, Pippa Lee is all about peeking. Peek behind Pippa (RWP), the picture perfect wife of ageing publisher (Alan Arkin) and one finds a post-punk floozy on all fours for Julianne Moore’s lesbian pornographer. Peek behind the floozy and you’ll find a little girl playing dress up for the benefit of her suburban speed freak mom (Maria Bello, excellent).
This is a film of secrets and lies, of repressed memories and strange displacements. A screamingly neurotic Winona Ryder is cheating on her partner. Pippa, meanwhile, is cheating on herself. Her hidden frustrations begin to surface when she and her ailing husband move, prematurely, into a retirement community; she sleepwalks, raids the fridge in somnambulist fits and returns repeatedly, tellingly, to the store where handsome screw-up Keanu Reeves works nights.
There are quirky, indie moments but writer-director Rebecca Miller keeps the pace at real time. It’s a neat trick. There are all sorts of crazy things going on, all kinds of heightened circumstances, beat out in a wholly plausible rhythm.
As a character Pippa Lee lives and breathes. She’s far earthier, far wittier than Ms. Miller’s previous creations (Personal Velocity, The Ballad Of Jack And Rose), none of whom, to the best of my recollection, seemed cool enough to hop in a campervan for a backseat rumble with Keanu Reeves.
Robin Wright Penn responds to her director’s lighter mood with delicate, deft comic movements. She and Ms. Miller are out to confound expectations and delight. To that end, the casting is countercultural, the plot is a minefield and the women are wild.