Rebecca Miller’s “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” is like a sigh of relief from a writer-director whose work has been sensitive/gloomy until now.
The film is also the first role that Robin Wright has had in ages that shows her considerable range as an actress. In particular, it allows her to loosen up and be funny, something she hasn’t done in a long time.
Wright plays the title character, Pippa, a polished, calm, trophy wife of the much older Herb Lee (Alan Arkin). Herb is a publishing legend, recently retired but with his hand still in, though he has moved the couple from Manhattan to a senior community in the Connecticut suburbs.
Pippa is creating a life for them away from the city. But she’s also a little bored with life as a wife and mother, tending to a country squire in the wilds of Connecticut. Even as she contemplates the future, Miller flashes us back to her base: as the child of a semi-crazed manic-depressive and, later, as a footloose teen (played by Blake Lively), a party girl who drifts into the orbit of rich, powerful Herb Lee at his Hamptons beach house one summer and beguiles him away from his wife without meaning to.
Now she’s Mrs. Lee. While Herb was attracted by her youth and beauty, he was also smitten with a young mind ripe for shaping. Inquisitive, questioning and fearless, she’s nonetheless easy pickings for Herb, who seems to have lost interest as he enters retirement. He treats her as a friendly roommate or a kindly niece.
Which is worse – tedious security or the wild old days when she lived close to the edge and had nothing? Can she somehow recapture the kind of vitality she had and apply it to her new life, beyond the ridiculous hobbies she keeps taking on? One possibility presents itself: the ne’er-do-well son of a neighbor, who turns out to be a pouty, tattooed Keanu Reeves, just the kind of bad-boy infusion she needs, if she’d let herself.
Miller’s film has an airier, less constricted feel than her earlier films,“Personal Velocity” or “Jack and Rose.” Much of that has to do with the lightness – and light – that Wright brings to the title role. Her comic timing is adept, her demeanor calm until it gives way to random bits of anarchy or wit that expose the character’s hilarious sense of self-preservation. She suddenly finds the ability to speak her mind – in a way that’s clear-eyed and forthright without giving in to anger or bitterness.
“The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” is full of surprises: odd moments that add layers to the unexpected feelings it evokes. This story of unpredictable second and third acts is a treat, a smart drama with flashes of comedy that keep you guessing from start to finish.
