A Couple Contends With Conception In The Honest, Funny 'Private Life'

Writer-director Tamara Jenkins has only made three features in 20 years, but each one feels like the work of someone who has continued to chip away at her screenplay the entire time — adding details, refining characters, getting everything just so. All three are about families on the edge: Her 1998 debut, Slums of Beverly Hills , follows a teenager (Natasha Lyonne) whose nomadic single father moves her and her brothers from one run-down apartment to another within the same elite school district. Her 2007 follow-up, The Savages , brings estranged siblings (Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman) together to take care of their elderly, dementia-riddled father. And now Private Life , debuting on Netflix, runs through the painful trials of a middle-aged couple desperate to have a baby after their biological clocks have expired. Jenkins makes comedy-dramas laced with acid one-liners and moments of heartbreak, but what most stands out most about them is their candor. Her families are never