Review of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009) by Walter M — 13 Dec 2009

"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.