Monday 11 January 2021

Private Life (2018 Tamara Jenkins & scr)

She made Slums of Beverly Hills (1998) and The Savages (2007). Three films in twenty years. I think some motherhood along the way...

This is rather good. A somewhat volatile (Q says hormonal) woman Kathryn Hahn and her husband Paul Giamatti are trying to have a child; after many setbacks they ask their step niece Kayli Carter if she'll be the egg donor. Her parents John Carroll Lynch and Molly Shannon are unamused.

Somewhat symbolic, and funny (love the touch that when the couple rapidly leave Thanksgiving, having upset everyone, Lynch still slips them some leftovers through the car window), and humane.

"You seem rather distant."
"I'm in the bathroom."

Jenkins: "There's an in-between place between the comedy and drama that shimmers. That's where I strive to go, because I believe that it's a more authentic landscape for talking with experience. "

Denis O'Hare is the doctor, Emily Robinson the other sister.

Glenn Gould is playing the Bach 'French Suites'. Photographed by Christos Voudouris and edited by Brian Kates. Has an amazing 'thanks to' page which includes Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor and Kevin Tent, Susan E Morse, Francis, Eleanor and Sofia Coppola and Greg Mottola! But no Baumbachs, which it feels a bit like.




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