The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Many films have explored the neuroses of middle-class American life. From American Beauty to the best of Woody Allen, the message is often the same: we’re all far more screwed up then we let on and money isn’t going to solve that. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is on similar terrain – Pippa (Robin Wright Penn) finds her carefully controlled life unravelling at the seams when her (much older) husband insists on moving to a retirement village. Pippa looks back at her younger years and wonders where on earth the wild child of her youth went to. The film has a terrific cast who play a range of suicidal, depressed, unfaithful and generally hung-up individuals, but unfortunately they all feel like the most clichéd of characters who we’ve seen a million times before. The result is a film that leaves your head as soon as you’ve left your seat. [Gail Tolley]