Netflix’s ‘Private Life’ a must-see infertility film

Director gets personal in unflinching look at timely topic

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – Get comfortable, because this is about to get real. Kathryn Hahn is ready; the actress walks out to join director Tamara Jenkins on a sunny hotel balcony, having swapped her formal attire for denim overalls. She sticks out a foot to show off a fuzzy black slide. “I’m totally turning into ‘The Golden Girls,’ ” Hahn grins. “Everything I buy now I’m like, ‘I’m going to wear this for the next 30 years.’ ” They’re putting fertility under the microscope in “Private Life,” a comedic drama now streaming on Netflix that offers an intimate view into the lives of accomplished writer Rachel (played by Hahn) and theater director turned small-batch pickle producer Richard (Paul Giamatti), who are trying to have a baby. Rachel is 41 and Richard is 47; the New Yorkers have spent much of their adult lives fleshing out careers in the arts. Now they’re focusing on creating a family. “People always say, ‘Oh, yeah, they did artificial insemination,’ ” says Jenkins (“Slums of Beverly Hills”), affecting a flippant tone. “But they don’t know what it means, what the grueling process of it is. It’s not cute.” And so Jenkins, whose 8-year-old daughter was born via IVF, mined her own history for “Private Life,” determined to make her film as honest a portrayal of the process as it gets. Including the shots women self-inject into their stomachs every night. “You know you mix the drugs (yourself)?” Jenkins asks. “Drunk people (have sex) and have babies all the time. They’re not having to sit there and, like, measure the perfect milligram.” The maze of fertility, “Private Life” shows, often can be death by a thousand cuts. After being told she’d have better odds using a younger egg – at least she’d be able to carry the child! – Rachel loses it. “What am I, a bellhop?” she shouts on the street. More people are having children later in life, says Hahn, 45, and the topic needs to be confronted without shame. The actress, who has two children, got pregnant at 35 only to be called “a geriatric mother.” “It just is a real bummer that our chief, most creatively fertile or historically creatively fertile years happen to be aligned with our babymaking years. It sucks,” says Hahn. “The years that you’re supposed to be building your career are the years that you’re supposed to be (having) babies,” Jenkins says. “That’s the tyranny of the female condition.” In the film, Rachel and Richard take an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to making their dreams come true, trying IVF and adoption while contemplating asking Richard’s stepniece to donate her eggs. Could the low-budget film’s leveling honesty send it to the Oscars? With a 92 percent positive Rotten Tomatoes score, “Netflix is making a ferocious effort to be a big Oscar player and that helps a little gem like ‘Private Life,’ ” says Tom O’Neil of GoldDerby.com. Jenkins was last nominated for best original screenplay for her 2007 film “The Savages,” and Hahn could a player for best actress, says O’Neil, though it’s “a crowded category” this year. “Netflix will have to push very hard.” What’s not hard? Small kindnesses. They’re Hahn’s go-to whenever approaching friends who may be struggling with fertility. “I’m a hugger. I just like silent hugs. Offers of walks. Gifts of massages,” she says. “There are so many little joys and mournings that I just want to be available for whatever those are.”

“The years that you’re supposed to be building your career are the years that you’re supposed to be (having) babies. That’s the tyranny of the female condition.” Tamara Jenkins Director

PHOTOS BY JOJO WHILDEN/NETFLIX Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn are taking the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to becoming parents in “Private Life.”

Director/writer Tamara Jenkins mined her own fertility struggles trying to conceive after 40 in “Private Life.”