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Robin Wright Penn and Keanu Reeves in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

R (2009) Publication Date Dec. 4, 2009

Pippa Lee (Robin Wright Penn) and her much older husband, Herb (Alan Arkin), a successful publisher, have just moved from Manhattan to an upscale retirement community in Connecticut. Everybody loves Pippa -- except Pippa herself. Neighbors and friends confide in her. Her best friend, Sandra (Winona Ryder), says, "I wish I could be peaceful and good like you." Little does she know.

Despite her loving husband, two grown kids, admiring friends and great furniture, all is not well in Pippa's psyche. She sleepwalks (caught by an in-kitchen surveillance camera), sees things that aren't there (a lion in the grass), walks to the corner grocery in her nightgown. To add to her other emotional conflicts, Pippa is tempted by the store's clerk, Chris (Keanu Reeves), the son of a neighbor, who has Jesus tattooed on his chest.

A series of flashbacks through Pippa's childhood and youth fill in some backstory, with Pippa narrating. Her pill-addled mother (Maria Bello) alternately smothers and rejects the teenage Pippa (played by Blake Lively of "Gossip Girl"), who decamps from the family home to live with her aunt and her aunt's lover, whose friend (Julianne Moore) quickly recognizes young Pippa as a perfect model for risque photos. On the lam again, Pippa goes the pill route herself, and inexplicably ends up at Herb Lee's lavish beach house, where a chic party is going on. Despite already being married (to Monica Bellucci's character), Herb falls for the not-so-ingenue-like Pippa; next thing you know, she's the next Mrs. Lee.

"The Private Lives" veers between a serious examination of the stresses of middle-age -- how many films on that subject do we get to see? -- and haute soap opera. There are two deaths (one a suicide), lots of extramarital sex (older man with younger woman, older woman with younger man), lesbianism, S & M, mother-daughter conflict -- what have I left out?

It's a tony production with an elite, highly skilled cast, and you have to wonder how producers could raise the money for an independent movie on a less than hot theme. But note that writer/director Rebecca Miller is the daughter of Arthur Miller and the wife of Daniel Day-Lewis.

Rated R for sexual content, brief nudity and some drug material and language. 1 hour, 33 minutes.

- Renata Polt