moviereview - Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY

	Miss Pettigrew becomes a social secretary to an American chanteuse in London, yet no one is whom they seems in this comedy of love and hope.	score 3	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Frances McDormand, Amy Adams, Shirley Henderson, Ciarán Hinds, Mark Strong

Director
Bharat Nalluri

Screenwriter
David Magee
Simon Beaufoy

Country
UK

Rating / Running Time
PG / 92 minutes

Australian Release
May 2008

Official Site

England is on the brink of war and Miss Pettigrew (McDormand) – the governess of last resort - has lost another job. Miss Holt’s employment agency stands between her and the soup kitchen yet compassion is not forthcoming. With little option, Guinivere Pettigrew steals a business card and introduces herself to American chanteuse Delysia Lafosse (Adams), a client of Miss Holt. Delyisa is similarly constrained by circumstance. Living off the wealth of one man, she’s in bed with another but in love with a third. So it is that two very different people find themselves thrown together just when they need a little of the other in their own life.

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day is a curious film. Divorced from reality, it mixes screwball comedy with hysterical drama on a layer of melancholy. It takes some time to find a rhythm, and even when it does, it’s an irregular one. While much of the film is laboured, mawkish and predictable, it’s oddly compelling. McDormand’s negotiation of Pettigrew’s transformation is heart-warming, and Adams is delightful as the Monroe-esque scatterbrained starlet-on-the-make. Wish-fulfilment is everything, and much of the fun lies in the emergence of an ethically upright and socially downtrodden governess into a flamboyant world of loose money and looser morals.

Yes it’s horrendously contrived. Yes it’s arch and awkward where it screams for a lighter touch. Inside rests a soufflé of a film just waiting to break through a weighty crust. But there’s a tremendous forward energy that keeps the balls in the air, and if you’ve a taste for joyous gossip in a story awash with lies, deception and adultery, Miss Pettigrew is waiting to help you with your needs.

// COLIN FRASER