Private Life (2018)
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Private Life Movie Review
Private Life is a 2018 drama film directed by Tamara Jenkins and starring Kathryn Hahn, Kayli Carter and Paul Giamatti. It’s such a terrific, important movie.
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“No, it’s just that whole… people with cappuccinos in their lofts,
with their laptops, dogs, with messy hair. You know, that whole fantasy.
It’s not your fault. You guys are authentic and real,
you’ve just been co-opted by cultural mechanisms that create desirability.
I took a media and consumer society course.
It was pretty life-altering“
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It follows a middle-aged married couple so desperate to have a child of their own, but they cannot conceive so they turn eventually to an egg donation approach, all the while ruining their marriage as a result. Now, first and foremost, this subject matter hit home for me personally as I know people like this and infertility is a major issue in Serbia in particular.
But not just that, more importantly I have very strong opinions about this matter, I am actually rather passionate about it. I do not get why it’s so important to have a child and especially if you do and can’t conceive, adopting and helping a child in need is a must in my opinion and anyone who doesn’t agree is just a selfish asshole. That’s my opinion and I will never change it.
This movie touches on all of that beautifully and very subtly. It portrays these two people as very selfish and ridiculously desperate that they almost become cartoony by the movie’s end. That was necessary and very well done. It sympathizes with them, but it also criticizes them which is a result of a very sophisticated script. It also showcases the positives and the negatives of having an egg donor while also very cleverly dealing with the implications that that has on the rest of the family as they chose an egg donor from their family.
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Kathryn Hahn is reliably amazing here. She has always been one hell of an actress and a highly underappreciated one at that. So obviously here she excelled once again at portraying this very realistic, problematic woman whom you relate to at times, but also hate in some other scenes. Her performance is so great that Paul Giamatti could just never compete. He’s good, but never as great as her. But Molly Shannon is quite good and to me Kayli Carter was a revelation here as she’s so wonderful and deeply inspirational as Sadie plus I related to her character the most personality-wise.
Private Life has its issues, most importantly the overlong runtime with the second half somewhat dragging in comparison to the much more effective and immediate first half. That was definitely a problem for me, but not a huge one nonetheless. I also found the direction from Tamara Jenkins solid, but not as great as the material demanded.
But I loved the emphasis on Sadie character-wise as she’s such a wonderful, relatable person to me and she stole her every scene. Speaking of scenes, the ambiguous ending is very clever and highly memorable whereas all scenes between the three of them are highly endearing and representative of one very happy, lovely family.
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The pacing is problematic undoubtedly, but the film is otherwise very well made with particularly sophisticated, grounded in reality dialogue and a stellar script. It deals with this subject matter that is way too underrepresented in movies and that needs to change as soon as possible. I found the film’s humor also very strong. I wouldn’t call it a dramedy, but there were elements of it as the dialogue is so witty. All in all, Netflix proved themselves again with this winning flick.
With sophisticated dialogue, a phenomenal script and a reliably fantastic performance from always amazing Kathryn Hahn, Private Life also benefits from a wonderful presence of Kayli Carter and a terrific mix of hard-hitting drama and strong humor. The important subject matter of infertility is way too underrepresented in movies and here it was superbly explored from all angles, leading to one of the year’s best dramas.
