Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

“Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day” is the kind of movie my mother would like. In a word, it is sweet. It’s frothy and frivolous, as well as a rather unsuccessful attempt at farce. It kind of wants to be a screwball comedy, a Woody Allen frenzied flick or a throwback to the days of Frank Capra, but never really finds the tricky rhythm a film like that requires. But just when you think it might be fizzy enough to give you a tummy ache, it pulls up and shows you some heft, a little gravity, a certain bittersweet aftertaste. And suddenly you’re glad it didn’t succeed on all those other notes, because this one is so much more satisfying.

Set in Mahvelous England between the Wars, Frances McDormand plays the Pettigrew of the title, and yes indeed, the events take place over the course of 24 hours, however unlikely that may seem. A nanny who can’t seem to hang on to a job, she is faced with the dual prospects of homelessness and hunger when she steals a namecard from her employment agency and shows up at the door of Amy Adams, pretending to be a social secretary. Adams is a flibbertigibbet, entertaining one man in another man’s flat on the day yet a third man plans to propose to her. Clearly, she needs help from the kind of level-headed, down to earth, practical sort of woman who…can’t keep a job looking after children. Well, anyway.

Frances McDormand and Amy Adams are entertaining as opposites, for a few minutes. It’s hard to imagine more contrasting actresses, but easy to imagine others in these roles; I kept thinking about Emma Thompson as I watched McDormand, and Adams made me think of Nicole Kidman. Their characters are one dimensional, and quickly grow tiresome. Happily, “Miss Pettigrew”’ introduces, right at this point of weariness, a whole rainbow of colorful, supporting characters, perhaps every one of them better cast than our leads. We meet Lee Pace, Adams’ One True Love, who looks and acts like a young Clive Owen, but with a soul. Then there’s Ciaran Hinds and Shirley Henderson, a quarrelling couple of polar opposites about to get married – or not. Henderson squeaks instead of speaks, and moves with a certain effortless, arrogant confidence. Her nose is always in the air, in the most attractive, disgusting way. Hinds is a big man, smooth and handsome, with an eye for the finer things in life – like the lingerie he designs. It’s clear from his first moment onscreen that he’s of a different sort than these, and satisfying when that intuition is later proven right.

And the movie proceeds as one would expect it to, Adams using her body to get into trouble (as well as expensive clothes, flats, and exclusive parties) and McDormand using her mind – and manners – to get Adams out of trouble. But then – wait for it –“Miss Pettigrew” peels back a layer, and shows its surprising heart.

All of a sudden, a few of the characters have dimensions, and the movie has a bittersweet undertone. The characters have a past, and a future. Now all the foolishness and fancy swirling around Miss Pettigrew feels terribly fragile, and we understand frivolity is something to be protected and prolonged, however doomed (and idiotic) it may be, because it can only happen in times of peace. And now we see the connection between McDormand and Hinds, and can guess the rest of the movie. I wish director Bharat Nalluri had seen fit to leave the subtext simply stated in that one scene, but the points gets belaboured a bit. Hiding under a table during an air raid drill, Amy Adams says “We’re going to war, aren’t we?” and McDormand simply must launch into a speech that begins, “Yes, we are. And that’s why you must not waste one second of this precious life.” We could’ve done without this speech; everything within it had already been suggested in much simpler, more graceful ways. And yet it doesn’t take away the bittersweet taste of that first moment, the golden touch of McDormand and Hinds together, remembering. That scene is what I will take away from this movie, and the feeling of that scene the feeling I will associate with “Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.” For all the scenes, moods, and moments it gets just slightly wrong, it gets that one exactly right. That’s something.

Recommended

• to my mom
• to fans of light, sweet frivolous films
• to fans of old “screwball comedies” ie Frank Capra and Ernst Lubitsch

Not Recommended

• to my dad
• to those who need something plausible right now
• to art film geeks who like to make fun of sweet movies with heart. 9Unless you’re looking for a new film to ridicule.)

“Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” is available today, August 19, on DVD.