Tagline: The life you love may be your own.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is an adventurous trip through Pippa Lee’s past and present, as a methamphetamine-addicted mother whose husband leaves her for a younger woman. Pippa indulges in an array of erotic adventures while heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown.
From all outward appearances, Pippa Lee (Robin Wright Penn) leads a charmed existence. She is the devoted wife of an accomplished publisher (Alan Arkin) thirty years her senior, the proud mother of two grown children, and a trusted friend and confidant to all who cross her path. But as Pippa dutifully follows her husband to a new life in a staid Connecticut retirement community, her idyllic world and the persona she has built over the course of her marriage will be put to the ultimate test.
In truth, looks are deceiving, and this picture-perfect woman has seen more than her fair share of turmoil in her youth. Embarking on a bittersweet journey of self-discovery, accompanied by a new, strange and soulful acquaintance (Keanu Reeves), Pippa must now confront both her volatile past and the hidden resentment of her seemingly perfect life in order to find her true sense of self. By turns wry, humorous, and moving, “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” presents the complex portrait of the many lives behind a single name.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a 2009 American drama film written and directed by Rebecca Miller. The screenplay is based on her novel of the same title. The film premiered on February 9, 2009, at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival and was shown at the Sydney Film Festival and the Edinburgh Film Festival before opening in the United Kingdom on July 10. Following a showing at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was limited released in the United States on November 27, 2009.
About the Story
The film chronicles the life of a woman named Pippa Lee, with flashbacks to her tumultuous past. Pippa Sarkissian was the youngest child and only girl in her large christian family. Her mother Suky (Maria Bello) was a neurotic mother with an obsessive fixation on her daughter’s looks.
By her teen years, Pippa discovers that her mother takes amphetamines in order to self-medicate her vast mood swings. She has a confrontation with her mother by taking drugs that results in Pippa leaving home and moving in with her aunt and roommate, who are in a lesbian relatioinship. After a time, the aunt discovers Pippa participating in erotic photo sessions with the roommate and her friends and banished from that apartment and goes on to live a bohemian life of drugs and working as an exotic dancer.
On a weekend jaunt with like-minded friends, she meets a charismatic publisher named Herb Lee who is 30 years older than she is and a romance develops between the young woman and the older man. The couple marry, have two children and later move into a retirement home in Connecticut. Through her marriage, Pippa has become the “perfect wife”: loving, supportive, everything to everyone and no one to herself.
The couple grow apart; Herb has an affair with one of Pippa’s friends and middle-aged Pippa has encounters with a younger man named Chris. After Herb dies from a heart attack, Pippa finally breaks with her life of subservience and refuses to set up the burial, leaving the details to her children. The film ends with Pippa driving off with Chris.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009)
Directed by: Rebecca Miller
Starring: Robin Wright Penn, Julianne Moore, Wynona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Maria Bello, Alan Arkin, Monica Bellucci, Blake Lively, Tim Guinee, Drew Beasley, Shirley Knight, Zoe Kazan, Monica Bellucci
Screenplay by: Rebecca Miller
Production Design by: Michael Shaw
Cinematography by: Declan Quinn
Film Editing by: Sabine Hoffman
Costume Design by: Jennifer von Mayrhauser
Set Decoration by: Cherish M. Hale
Music by: Michael Rohatyn
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, brief nudity, some drug material and language.
Distributed by: Screen Media Films
Release Date: November 27, 2009
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