Movie review: Netflix's 'Private Life' infuses tale of fertility battles with humor
“Private Life” - ★ ★ ½
The three things most couples fight about are said to be sex, money and kids. Tamara Jenkins has managed to up the ante for one stressed-out husband and wife by combining all of them in her latest movie.
“Private Life” is a deeply personal — perhaps even invasive — look at the challenges facing one privileged, artsy New York couple: Rachel and Richard, played perfectly by Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti, who are hoping to get pregnant via assisted reproduction.
They're trying to have a child late in life and do virtually everything — IUI, IVF, egg donation, sperm boosts and adoption. That means tests, injections, probes, pills, more tests and more injections. It takes its toll, both emotionally and financially.
Jenkins (“Slums of Beverly Hills” and “The Savages”) both wrote and directed “Private Life,” her first film in 11 years, and she has said it was inspired in part by her own struggles to have a child. That has clearly informed her wonderful knack for capturing the absurdities when cold medicine meets intimate biology.
Though at times meandering, a knowing and sympathetic humor pervades the film. One fabulous scene has Richard trying in vain to turn down the volume on clinic-offered porn while exam table paper is stuck to his bottom.
Hahn's Rachel is both gleefully neurotic and deeply anguished, and Giamatti's Richard is resigned and exhausted. Both are wordlessly wonderful as they fight to remain optimistic in the face of repeatedly bad news.
Others in the cast include a terrific Molly Shannon and John Carroll Lynch as relatives facing their own crises, and a simply perfect Denis O'Hare as a slightly creepy and blithe fertility doctor. “OK, let's get pregnant, shall we?” he says more than once.
At times, Rachel and Richard's quest for children seems to be an end in and of itself. They offer no overt adoration of children, no cooing over baby onesies. One Halloween, they forget that kids will be at the door asking for candy.
A possible solution to their problem comes in the form of a sweet but naive niece, 25-year-old Sadie (an excellent Kayli Carter). Sadie might want to donate an egg to help the process but can she handle the wild trip ahead? At one anxious point, she's asked about her own eggs. “Scrambled is good,” she replies, misunderstanding.
The film slightly breaks down at this point, bending to absorb the new character and never fully solving her presence. “Private Life” basically peters out at the end and reveals itself for what it has always been: Not a quest so much as a profile in love's resilience.
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Starring: Kathryn Hahn, Paul Giamatti, Kayli Carter, Denis O'Hare
Directed by: Tamara Jenkins
Other: A Netflix release. At the Landmark Renaissance in Chicago and available Friday, Oct. 5, on Netflix. Rated R for nudity, language and medical procedures. 124 minutes