Tamara Jenkins makes about one movie a decade (I wish there were more) and each one is personal in its own way, funny, human, complex. The Slums of Beverly Hills was uneven in spots, but featured an amazingly rich and layered atmosphere – the underclass of Beverly Hills – and an amazing cast (Marisa Tomei, Alan Arkin, Natasha Lyonne). The characters are complex people who marched to the beat of their own often-misbegotten drummer. I loved it. I was a huge fan at the time. I had no idea I’d have 10 years to wait for Jenkins to direct again, this time with The Savages, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney. It was worth the wait. Hoffman and Linney play tormented unhappy siblings trying to deal with their father’s dementia. The Savages was nominated for 2 Oscars (including one for Jenkins’ superb script). And now, another decade later, is Private Life, starring Katherine Hahn and Paul Giamatti as a couple whose struggle with infertility has co-opted their whole relationship. It’s an infertility … comedy? But no, that’s not right, although it is sometimes very funny. It’s an extremely detailed look at the sometimes absurd fertility industry, but it takes very very seriously the toll wanting a baby and not being able to have one takes on a couple. If you’ve known a couple who has struggled like this, you know how sad it is, how much mourning is done, how difficult it is to move on, to accept that you might not get to “do that,” to deal with just how oppressive our culture can be in its expectation that this is what married people do, and if you want to have a baby, well then go right ahead, have a baby. It’s so good!
Private Life will be playing at the New York Film Festival before being released on October 5.
I reviewed it in the Sept-Oct issue of Film Comment, soon to be hitting newsstands near you (maybe). This is a wonderful film, even though it sounds like a Lifetime movie. It’s not. Just as The Savages wasn’t a “message” movie about dementia – it ended up being a mournful look at how difficult it is to care for an elderly parent, especially if you didn’t have much of a relationship with them when they were alive. Private Life tells a story that’s rarely been told in cinema. Infertility stories usually are on the sidelines of the action, and are usually played for comedy. Private Life puts it front and center, as it is in the characters’ lives. I loved it.
