The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, a movie that probably has only about 10 screenings left before it is pushed out by bigger year-end fare, has many flaws it cannot be denied, but it gets so many things right and is so rich with honesty that I’m quite surprised by the generally negative reviews. 

Robin Wright Penn nails the title role and doesn’t bring the Oscar-mongering histrionics demanded by the season. She’s subtle, nearly robotic at times, as a trophy wife who believes she may be losing her mind. 

The film has been criticized for covering a lot of the same ground of other films, in other words, stereotyping it as a “chick flick,” a term (predominantly male) critics immediately associate with a lower value assessment. 

But what I found so fascinating and solid about the movie is that it shows characters and scenarios that we may have been seen before, but that same equation unexpectedly produces different results.  What Pippa inherits from her mother (Maria Bello) can only be suppressed so long, particularly as she suppresses everything else in her life, just to serve her husband (Alan Arkin) as his prop.  Director Rebecca Miller makes some unfortunate narrative choices, but also counters a hallucinatory world that bring us into the mind of Pippa and a refusal to make anything (except the voice-over ending) too neat or easy.

In a year that seems to have sparked a lot of thought about women in film—the unique story of Precious, Kathryn Bigelow’s quest to be the first female Best Director, this weekend’s NY  Times alone offered at least three serious women-in-film pieces—The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a strong work that should keep the dialogue going.

–Pops Corn