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

This is a story you'll want to watch to its exquisitely compassionate ending: a wordless final-credits aria that, as with Michael Clayton and Call Me by Your Name, speaks volumes about the nature of minute-to-minute emotional survival.

There are elements on the fringe of Private Life (a few supporting performances, the 127-minute length, a couple of sitcomish turns), that keep it from connecting as much I wanted, but the work by Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn always holds it together.