The film of Rebecca Miller’s gripping and insightful The Private Lives of Pippa Lee opened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last week, and it showed its strength in the strong numbers of audience members several showings down the line.
Clearly a word-of-mouth phenomenon as well as a commercially appealing piece of storytelling, Pippa translates exceptionally well between page and screen. The benefit of having an accomplished director, Rebecca Miller, who was also the book’s author, is pitch-perfectly evident in the powerful characterisations and humane (but never predictable) tale.
Robin Wright Penn’s performance as Pippa Lee was one of the most measured, thought-provoking and compelling pieces out of her entire career. And I liked seeing Alan Arkin reprise his touchy, rebellious Old Man character, which he played to such great comic effect in Little Miss Sunshine. The scenes from the earlier years of his character, Herb Lee, showed a more nuanced, soft-spoken side, creating an irresistibly real man and a convincing portrait of the universal battle against old age and nothingness.
As a whole, the film has a kind of bright, blurry texture that relentlessly pulls the viewer into Pippa’s world – the place of an ordinary woman, who has been many women in her time.
