The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee is a homecoming of sorts for Rebecca Miller. The film is based on her own novel of the same name and is being shot in the area of Connecticut where she grew up.

'The house I'm staying in while I film is where I grew up with my parents. It's a wonderful experience to be able to work here, it makes life so much easier,' she says.

Miller says she enjoys seeing her novel-turned-screenplay being reinterpreted by her cast, which is a director's dream line-up of Robin Wright Penn, Alan Arkin, Monica Bellucci, Maria Bello, Blake Lively, Julianne Moore, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder.

'Every scene is a surprise; you don't know how it's going to be interpreted with the actors,' says Miller. 'When you write it's almost like writing music in your head - and then other people bring it to life. You're letting go and embracing the material at the same time, that's what's fun.'

Miller - the daughter of late playwright Arthur Miller - adapted the script, and notes the film's structure is completely different from the novel. There are two intertwined stories, one in the present with Pippa Lee (Wright Penn) and one in her mother Suky's (Bello) past.

Pippa Lee is a 50-year-old wife and mother whose husband has an affair (mirroring Pippa's own adventures with a married man when she was a young woman). She also has to reconcile her own past with her pill-addicted mother.

'The film is not exactly a drama in a straight sense; it's got lyrical and whimsical elements to it,' Miller says. 'So it's a bit fantastical and there are comedic elements to it, but it's fundamentally about relationships.'

After Angela (1995), Personal Velocity (2002) and The Ballad Of Jack And Rose (2005), Pippa Lee is Miller's fourth feature. 'It's got a lightness about it that I don't think I've had in my films until now,' she says.

The $7m project will wrap on June 4 with delivery by the end of the year. London-based Salt is handling sales.

Lemore Syvan (Elevation Filmworks) and Dede Gardner (Plan B) produce, with executive producers Jean-Luc De Fanti, Jill Footlick and Salt's three founders, Cyril Megret, Robert Bevan and Samantha Horley.

After Pippa Lee, Miller may return to fiction writing and take some time off back home in Dublin. 'I've got a book of short stories I want to write. I just want to hibernate for a while and then write. Film-making is so violent and intense that I need to recover.'

When she does return to film, Miller says she would like to again work with her husband, who is, of course, the Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis. 'We're always kicking ideas around, but I don't know when we'll work together again. Daniel is home with the kids while I work, and vice versa. Maybe when they are older.'