The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a  2009  American  drama film written and directed by  Rebecca Miller. The screenplay is based on her novel of the same title. The film premiered on February 9, 2009, at the  59th Berlin International Film Festival and was shown at the  Sydney Film Festival and the  Edinburgh Film Festival before opening in the  United Kingdom on July 10. Following a showing at the  Toronto International Film Festival, it was limited released in the  United States on November 27, 2009.

Plot
The film chronicles the life of a woman named Pippa Lee, with flashbacks to her tumultuous past. Pippa Sarkissian was the youngest child and only girl in her large catholic family. Her mother Suky (Maria Bello) was a neurotic mother with an obsessive fixation on her daughter's looks. By her teen years, Pippa discovers that her mother takes amphetamines in order to self-medicate her vast mood swings. She has a confrontation with her mother by taking drugs and the result is that Pippa leaves home and moves in with her lesbian aunt. After participating in erotic photo sessions, Pippa is banished from that apartment too and goes on to live a bohemian life of drugs and working as an exotic dancer. On a weekend jaunt with like-minded friends, she meets a charismatic publisher named Herb Lee who is 30 years older than she is and a romance develops between the young woman and the older man. The couple marry, have two children and later move into a retirement home in Connecticut. Through her marriage, Pippa has become the "perfect wife": loving, supportive, everything to everyone and no one to herself. The couple grow apart; Herb has an affair with one of Pippa's friends and middle-aged Pippa has encounters with a younger man named Chris. After Herb dies from a heart attack, Pippa finally breaks with her life of subservience and refuses to set up the burial, leaving the details to her children. The film ends with Pippa driving off with Chris.

Cast

 * Robin Wright as Pippa Lee
 * Blake Lively as Young Pippa
 * Alan Arkin as Herb Lee
 * Keanu Reeves as Chris Nadeau
 * Maria Bello as Suky Sarkissian
 * Zoe Kazan as Grace Lee
 * Winona Ryder as Sandra Dulles
 * Mike Binder as Sam Shapiro
 * Monica Bellucci as Gigi Lee
 * Ryan McDonald as Ben Lee
 * Julianne Moore as Kat
 * Shirley Knight as Dot
 * Robin Weigert as Trish