Ain’t Life Grand? | Amy Adams and Frances McDormand find refuge beneath a piano in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY
Directed by Bharat Nalluri. Starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. Opens Fri, Mar 7.
3 1/2 Star
It’s turning into a very bad day for governess Miss Guinevere Pettigrew.
Fired yet again because of persistent clashes with the employers she’s set up with, Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) is also now in the bad books of the employment agency she frequents.
Wandering the London streets with her battered valise, eating at soup kitchens, the self-proclaimed “vicar’s daughter” finds herself homeless and unemployable. Desperate for work in a Britain on the cusp of World War II, she bites back her pride and weasels her way into a position as social secretary for American actress Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams), a Carole Lombard type whose philosophy of life is the complete opposite of Pettigrew’s rigorously correct outlook.
The entire situation is an affront to Pettigrew’s stern moral sensibilities—there’s a man in Delysia’s bed, another one coming up the stairs, and still another one to be reckoned with at a later date. Delysia is a kept woman with a series of lovers she plays off as she attempts to make her name in the theatre world. Somehow, in just a few minutes, Pettigrew manages not only to fend off Delysia’s many ardent suitors, but also insert some order in her life—for which the spinny actress is gushingly grateful. Soon Miss Pettigrew gets a beautiful-people makeover, and is pulled into a convoluted series of screwball events in a 24-hour period that completely changes her life.
Based on a long-forgotten 1939 novel by Winifred Watson, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a riff of sorts on My Man Godfrey—poor servant changes the life of flaky employer. As completely predictable as it is utterly charming, the movie unabashedly runs down a checklist of Golden Age Hollywood clichés: slimy nightclub owners, dashing-yet-poor musicians, venomous high society ladies, caddish rich kids, true love conquers all. The sets are almost all luxurious flats, fashion shows, and high end lingerie shops, the dialogue is out of Noel Coward or Sidney Gilliat, and songs by Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, and Yip Harburg are scattered throughout the soundtrack.
It would be easy to write off Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day as a frothy, inconsequential trifle—and in a sense it is—but upon closer examination, the film’s underpinnings are a bit more serious. When Pettigrew alludes to her own lost life opportunities, or bemusedly reflects on her sudden appearance in the midst of a crowd of spoiled and callow rich folks, her somewhat stodgy and rigorous persona is thrown into sharp relief—as in a scene where guests at one of Delysia’s parties excitedly run out to watch bombers flying slowly over the city. Meanwhile, Pettigrew and fashion designer Joe (Ciarán Hinds)—the two oldest characters—sit silently together until Pettigrew turns and says, “They don’t remember the last one.”
McDormand and Adams bounce very nicely off each other—there’s a real warmth that develops between them, moreso than with any of the male actors, with the possible exception of Hinds, as a man who sees past Pettigrew’s plainness. Everyone else plays to type, with no surprises—but again, this is the type of film whose pleasure lies not in plot twists, but in watching everything unfold precisely as it should.
