The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

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 received a limited release in the United States on November 27, 2009.^[2]

Plot[edit]

The film chronicles the life of Pippa Lee, with flashbacks of her tumultuous past. Pippa was the youngest child and only girl in her large Christian family. Her mother Suky was a neurotic mother with an obsessive fixation on her daughter's looks.


By her teen years, Pippa discovers that her mother takes amphetamines to self-medicate vast mood swings. She has a confrontation with her mother about her drug use, so Pippa moves in with her aunt Trish and her girlfriend Kat, who are in a lesbian menage. Trish discovers that Pippa is participating in erotic photo sessions with Kat and her friends; she is banished and goes on to live a bohemian life of drugs, working as an exotic dancer.


On a weekend jaunt with like-minded friends, Pippa meets charismatic publisher Herbert "Herb" Lee, who is 30 years older than her. A romance develops between them although he is married. Before his wife will grant him a divorce, she invites Pippa and Herb to lunch. At the table, she points the gun at Pippa before ending her own life.


Pippa and Herb marry, have two children, and once they are gone 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 grows apart; Herb has an affair with one of Pippa's friends and middle-aged Pippa connects with 35-year-old Chris.


After Herbert Lee dies from a cardiac arrest, Pippa breaks with her life of subservience and leaves the details of Lee's memorial, etc., to their children. The film ends with Pippa driving off with Chris.