Robin Wright Penn gives a subtle and soulful performance as a longtime wife and mother belatedly seeking to find herself in middle age.

| Nov 22, 2020

There is an episodic quality to the film that doesn't quite work, but Robin Wright Penn's strong central performance and Miller's capable screenplay deftly navigate the familiar trajectory of the story.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 5, 2019

| Original Score: C | Sep 7, 2011

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011

A feel-good film, both disconcerting and rewarding on all fronts.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 12, 2010

As a woman under the influence of everyone but herself, Pippa often feels lost when she's on her own - a blank slate with no one holding a chalk - Robin Wright Penn allows us to get to know a character who still doesn't really know herself.

| Original Score: 7.1/10 | Jul 4, 2010

There's a deliberate quality to the storytelling that makes the movie drag in many scenes; and yet, numerous characters flit by that we don't have time to really meet.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 26, 2010

... for once in a [Rebecca] Miller film, the chuckles are generally intentional ...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 5, 2010

Penn is such an intelligent performer that it's easy for us to believe everyone else in the film sees a different side -- a different life -- of the enigmatic Pippa Lee -- and that there are still many other sides to this fascinating character...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 22, 2010

A superb performance by Robin Wright Penn illuminates Rebecca Miller's intelligent and revealing look at the inner wild child beneath a 50-ish Connecticut matron.

| Jan 15, 2010

Robin Wright Penn gives an award-caliber performance in the title role of a woman trying to find her place in the scheme of things after moving with her older husband to a retirement village in suburban Connecticut.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 25, 2009

All the midnight bulimic binges, suicide attempts, sleepwalking, marital chicanery, and little pills don't mean a thing compared to the thrill of being a middle-aged woman sneaking through the bedroom window like a teenager in heat.

| Dec 15, 2009

Just as The Twilight Saga: New Moon taps into to the sexual yearnings and psychic disturbances of pubescent girls, so does The Private Lives of Pippa Lee for the perimenopausal crowd.

| Dec 12, 2009

The movie holds your interest with a series of loosely connected episodes, but leaves you in a frozen and distant state.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 12, 2009

Provides a nice role for Robin Wright Penn, but it's a film in search of a tone.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 11, 2009

Perhaps "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" might have been a stronger film had it focused on a single private life instead of a cornucopia of them.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 11, 2009

The results are honorable but not terribly interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 11, 2009

Penn is the best thing about the movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 4, 2009

Awkward in ways both intended and not.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 4, 2009

By turns antic, frantic, and dull, Pippa Lee is unconvincing -- emotionally, dramatically, filmically.

| Original Score: C- | Dec 4, 2009