Film

Private Life

Name: Private Life
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: 2018
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Kathryn Hahn, Kayli Carter, Molly Shannon, John Carroll Lynch

Tamara Jenkins' dry, exhausted comedy follows a Manhattan couple grinding through IVF, egg donors, and open-adoption meetings with the specific fatigue of people who've tried everything twice. Giamatti and Hahn are superb — funny, unkind to each other, never pitiable. It's for anyone who wants a fertility story told without sentimentality, uplift, or a tidy resolution.

TMDb rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like comedy that stays uncomfortably close to grief, where the jokes come from exasperation and marriage is seen up close with no tidy consolation.

Skip it if the story meanders across its two hours with a wry, observational rhythm that can feel repetitive if you want momentum or a clear arc to hold onto.

What it asks of you: Just over two hours of small, drawn-out moments, where laughs arrive in brief bursts between long stretches of waiting and quiet unease.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Marriage Story2019

Noah Baumbach's divorce drama shares Private Life's gift for finding sharp comedy inside genuine anguish — two smart, decent people worn down by process, paperwork, and their own worst instincts.

But It's a breakup, not a fertility saga, and its ending offers more catharsis than Jenkins ever allows herself.

The Savages2007

Jenkins's earlier film, with the same unsentimental eye for adult children stumbling through an unglamorous crisis — this time their father's decline rather than their own fertility. Same DNA, same wit.

But It's about aging and dementia, not babies, and its ending is quieter and sadder than Private Life's shrug of hope.

Obvious Child2014

Jenny Slate is superb in this scrappy indie about an unplanned pregnancy and the abortion that follows, handled with the same refusal to sanctify or apologize for the body's plain biology.

But It's twenty-something and downtown-broke where Private Life is exhausted, forty, and solvent; the stakes are lighter throughout.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Private Life

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Baby Mama2008

Takes the exact same fear — that your body won't cooperate with your plan for a family — and plays it for slapstick instead of ache, proving the premise works in almost any register.

Tina Fey hires Amy Poehler as a surrogate in this broad studio comedy — pratfalls and odd-couple gags standing in for the same anxieties about bodies, money, and who gets to be a mother.

But It's silly where Private Life is sober, with none of the marital ache or medical realism — pure comfort-food comedy.

Together2021

A single man and the surrogate carrying his child build an odd, careful intimacy — funny and tender about the unglamorous logistics of wanting a baby without romance getting in the way.

But It's gentler and slighter than Private Life, without the marital wear-and-tear that gives Jenkins's film its bite.

The Big Sick2017

Kumail Nanjiani's real-life courtship comedy turns medical crisis into something hilarious and devastating at once, the same trick Jenkins pulls with fertility clinics — love tested by hospitals and bad news.

But It's a coma, not IVF, and a courtship, not a marriage — sweeter and more optimistic than Private Life's grind.

This Is 402012

Apatow's messy, overlong marriage comedy has the same appetite for the humiliations of being a couple past forty — money, bodies, resentment — played for laughs that genuinely sting.

But It sprawls where Jenkins is precise, and its comedy runs broader and cruder than anything in Private Life.

American Splendor2003

Paul Giamatti again, this time as real-life cartoonist Harvey Pekar, married to a woman just as prickly and unglamorous as Kathryn Hahn's Rachel — a marriage held together by shared exhaustion.

But It's about comic books and chronic illness, not fertility, and its style is scrappier and more collage-like than Jenkins's clean naturalism.

Instant Family2018

A studio comedy about foster-to-adopt parenting, far broader than Private Life but sharing its interest in the bureaucratic absurdity and unglamorous paperwork of building a family the hard way.

But It's warmer and far more crowd-pleasing, sanding down the ambivalence and exhaustion that give Jenkins's film its edge.

Enlightened2011

Mike White's underseen HBO series follows a woman rebuilding her life after a breakdown, with the same tragicomic tone — hope and self-delusion tangled together, funny until it suddenly isn't.

But It's not about fertility at all; the connection is tonal and emotional rather than situational, so the fit is looser.

The Baby Maker1970

Shows the desperation Private Life depicts through modern medicine already existing before the medicine did — the same ache for a biological child, solved by an even messier human arrangement.

A hippie-era drama about a young woman hired to be a biological surrogate for a childless couple, decades before IVF existed — the same tangle of bodies, money, and ownership, played as earnest melodrama.

But It's dated in style and politics, slow by modern standards, and its treatment of the surrogate herself now reads uncomfortably paternalistic.