Private Life

Netflix | Release Date: October 5, 2018

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

83	METASCORE Universal acclaim based on 32 Critics

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzOct 5, 2018

The film's writer-director, Tamara Jenkins is a brilliant chronicler of upper-middle class white people and their foibles, and her eye for detail is anthropologically exact, empathetic but never begging for sympathy. Read full review

100

Washington PostMichael O'SullivanOct 4, 2018

The comedy, while unflinchingly honest and prone to bandying about such terms as “intracytoplasmic sperm injection” and “follitropin,” is never really about technology, though. Rather, and to its great credit, it’s always about the people involved. Read full review

100

Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangOct 4, 2018

Jenkins constructs an entire narrative from little exchanges, reveries, complications and setbacks. With a mix of concentration and expansiveness that can take your breath away, she unpacks exactly what “they’ve tried everything” means. Read full review

100

L.A. WeeklyAlan ScherstuhlOct 4, 2018

Jenkins (director of The Savages and Slums of Beverly Hills) is always more interested in emotional truth than she is in laughs. Throughout Private Life’s tense 124 minutes, she continually achieves both. Read full review

100

The New York TimesA.O. ScottOct 4, 2018

Though it is poignant and funny in nearly equal measure, the most remarkable aspect of Private Life may be its lack of noticeable exaggeration. Ms. Jenkins is working at the scale of life, with the confidence that the ordinary, if viewed from the right angle, will provide enough drama and humor to sustain our interest. Read full review

100

New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein

Jenkins’ writing underlines the fundamental instability at the heart of all our lives, while proposing that most universal of remedies: empathy, love. Read full review

Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyOct 3, 2018

It’s about perseverance, compassion, and empathy. Read full review

IndieWireDavid Ehrlich

Crucially, these characters are so believable that every scene has an internal logic and justifies itself. Read full review

Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsOct 13, 2018

Jenkins can find the humor and bleached-out irony in something as sterile as a hospital’s oppressively white walls—it’s a true talent. Let’s not wait another decade to get more of it. Read full review

LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenOct 24, 2018

Hahn and Giamatti make for a great movie couple, in that the very way they stand near each other makes you believe they’ve already been through better and worse. Read full review

ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 11, 2018

When movies address fertility problems – something they rarely do in the first place – it’s usually with something less than the honesty on display in Private Life. Read full review

ObserverOliver JonesOct 5, 2018

It’s a little long and leisurely. However, fueled by Rachel and Richard’s baby mania, it never drags. Read full review

Paste MagazineTim Grierson

Giamatti gives one of his surest, simplest performances in quite a while, playing a supportive husband who, we suspect, may not be quite as gung-ho about conceiving as his wife is. And while Carter is very good as a young woman trying to find herself—full of youthful enthusiasm but also provocation—Private Life is mostly a glorious showcase for Hahn. Read full review

The AtlanticDavid SimsOct 5, 2018

Jenkins uses her gift for capturing intimacy as a weapon, telling a story that’s sometimes brutal, other times acidly funny, but always honest. Read full review

The Film StageJordan Raup

A generous, graceful, full-hearted drama about the complexities of desiring a child when your physiology denies you at every turn. Read full review

The GuardianCath ClarkeOct 5, 2018

What an intelligent, emotionally grown-up film. More of this please. Read full review

TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanOct 4, 2018

As both writer and director, Jenkins pushes us to rise above judgment by steadfastly refusing to indulge in it herself. Deep empathy suffuses the screen, enveloping every one of the characters. Read full review

Time OutJoshua Rothkopf

The riskiness of [Jenkins'] set-up, one that blooms with complications and rawness, is a thing of adventurous beauty. Her film is a gift to those people who discretely flinch at every dinner party and kid-celebratory anecdote. Read full review

VoxAlissa Wilkinson

Private Life is an accessible and complex portrait of two people whose ardent shared desire for a child leads them in some unconventional directions, and it’s a joy to watch whether or not you’ve shared their experience. Read full review

Consequence of SoundCaroline SiedeOct 5, 2018

Despite its carefully measured comedic voice and the detail with which it depicts the IVF process, the film never quite manages to feel like something completely groundbreaking. Read full review

Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 3, 2018

A modern comedy-drama in the Woody Allen-Noah Baumbach mold — urban intellectuals talking their lives in circles — but what keeps it from being a live-action New Yorker cartoon is the heart beating away in the script and the performances. At over two hours, it’s long but it’s true. Read full review

The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd

The film’s dramatic core, its vision of what this kind of experience can do to a marriage, is rock solid, because Jenkins explores it with a high degree of specificity, precisely dramatizing her own difficult experiences. Read full review

Rolling StoneDavid FearOct 5, 2018

What you ultimately get out this chronicle of people trying to get in the family way, and who end up experiencing their own sense of parenthood via their young guest/partner-in-crime, is enough to sustain you through the rougher patches. Read full review

Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 4, 2018

What Sadie brings most importantly to Private Life is the lovely, sometimes loopy and always infectious joy she takes in living. She’s a bright, welcome presence in a film that can be startlingly dark, even polemic, and she represents another side of Ms. Jenkins, whose previous films, “Slums of Beverly Hills” and “The Savages,” were overflowing with life. Read full review

SlateInkoo KangOct 2, 2018

Private Life is certainly very good at shivving its characters at close range and gutting these dyspeptic, privileged white people when they deserve it. Save for Sadie’s charmed fate, I can’t fault Private Life for nailing what it sets out to accomplish. But its cultural narrowness, however well-expounded, also left me wondering about the trials and tribulations of all the other couples in that waiting room long after we’d seen the last of them. Read full review

The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeFore

Looked at independently, so many scenes contain something raw or truthful that one understands Jenkins' reluctance to trim. Read full review

VarietyOwen Gleiberman

It’s witty and moving but a touch repetitive, and it goes on for too long. That said, Jenkins has made the most intimate comedy imaginable about the fertility blues. Private Life hits some delicate nerves, and heals a few of them too. Read full review

New York PostJohnny OleksinskiOct 9, 2018

Private Life gives us an intrusive and often funny look into a couple’s struggle to conceive. If only director Tamara Jenkins’ dramedy stayed as grounded as its relatable premise. Read full review

Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonOct 4, 2018

Jenkins does something daring with the story's resolution – conceptually brilliant, but you may think that it pays a small dividend on a large emotional investment. Read full review

The Associated PressMark KennedyOct 2, 2018

The script crackles with small, brilliant moments. Read full review

The PlaylistGregory Ellwood

Jenkins has a vision and something interesting to say in Private Life, but it needs some serious editing to convey it succinctly. Read full review

Slant MagazineSam C. MacSep 26, 2018

Instead of offering a probing, nuanced view of the burgeoning technologies and sciences involved in this relatively new outgrowth of the OBGYN industry, though, Tamara Jenkins uses her setting as fodder for lame and discomfiting physical comedy. Read full review