B+ | A middle-aged couple tries any means available to them to add a child to their family. Directed by Tamara Jenkins Starring Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti Review by Jon Kissel |
Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life begins with a suggestion that its central couple is in physical love with each other, as Kathryn Hahn’s Rachel and Paul Giamatti’s Richard are lying side by side on their bed together. Jenkins’ camera is at waist level, Richard asks if Rachel’s ready, he pulls her underwear aside, and… sticks her with a syringe. This is a couple desperate to have a baby, but sex doesn’t enter into the picture; based on this first scene, there’s only more pain for Rachel than she expected and exhaustion for Richard. As they both try and thwart their mid-life crises by starting a new life, Rachel and Richard go through a very difficult year of treatments and interviews and anticipation and disappointment in one of those movies that addresses How We Live Now. Jenkins joins Lynne Ramsay and Debra Granik as female directors who inexplicably had to wait years and years to put out their next film, only to grace 2018 with their particular strengths and perceptiveness towards all the joy and misery mixed up with being alive.
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