Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
3/16/08
It's
my self-appointed job here at The Palace to break the movies I see down:
to tell you why they work (or don't), and to explain what about them might
appeal to (or repulse) you. But there are some movies that just ping
me like a tuning fork. I can tell you about the virtues of their
acting and filmmaking, but the greatest thing they have going for them
is that they just gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. Like this one.
Between the Great Depression and the coddling and appeasement of Nazis
and Fascists that laid the groundwork for WWII, the 1930's wasn't exactly
our finest decade. But it was the heyday of Showbiz glamor and saw
the birth of screwball comedy. The new comedy Miss Pettigrew Lives
for a Day somehow takes all four things and mixes them together into
a lovely little comedy of manners and dreams. Top-shelf performances
keep the laughs coming while also delivering on the story's darker undercurrents,
making this adaptation of Winifred Watson's novel as moving as it is silly.
Guenevere
Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) is at the end of her rope. Already
considered a “Governess of Last Resort” by her employment agency, she is
dismissed yet again by an angry employer and finds no new job offers forthcoming.
Broke and homeless, she grabs a lifeline off an agent's desk: the
address of an actress seeking a social secretary. That's Delysia
Lafosse (Amy Adams), who uses the word “actress” loosely: she IS
sleeping with the son (Tom Payne) of a Producer who could give her the
lead role in a hot new West End Musical. She's also seeing a heel
named Gerry (Matt Ryan), who's putting her up in an apartment, and still
carries a torch for pianist Michael (Lee Pace), who's just been released
from jail. With gall and ingenuity, Miss Pettigrew quickly makes
herself indispensable and lands the job. But there are more complications
than just Delysia's: social climber Edythe Dubarry (Shirley Henderson)
recognizes Guenevere and threatens her with exposure if she doesn't mend
her fractured engagement to fashion mogul Joe (Ciaran Hinds), for whom
Miss Pettigrew develops her own feelings. And then there are those
air raid sirens reminding everyone to grab whatever happiness they can
before it's too late...
Miss
Pettigrew Lives for a Day gets a lot of millage out of its' seemingly
innocuous title: by making it clear from the outset that Guenevere's
moment as Delysia's right hand will last no more than 24 hours, it keeps
the flames to the feet of a character perfectly pitched by the always-excellent
McDormand as someone who deserves so much better than the cards life has
dealt her. So too is Delysia, initially so blithely immoral, brought
to wonderfully rich life by Adams as someone who chases her dreams at any
cost because tough times leave her without any safety net at all.
Initially a pure screwball comedy, the movie brilliantly pulls back layer
after layer of its' characters to reveal the scars living in truly hard
times have inflicted upon them. A great deal of the sensational chemistry
between McDormand and Hines (a reliable character actor who rarely gets
a chance to shine the way he does here) comes from the way they summon
Guenevere and Joe's shared sense of foreboding as the younger people around
them cheer the coming horrors of war they remember all too well from twenty
years earlier. As skillfully directed by Bharat Nalluri, it's a movie
that draws a lot of laughs out of breaking the tension of its' own sadness,
while it draws a lot of its' sadness out of how much it's made you like
its' funny characters.
Not
that I want to make Miss Pettigrew sound like a slog: it's
light on its' feet and the cast does a great job picking up the screwball
comedy rhythm (something that fails in at least ¾ of modern attempts
to revive the genre). What makes it special is the way the screenplay
by David Magee and Simon Beaufoy flavors the humor with emotion so we can
laugh with the characters rather than at them. The late-30's production
and costume design are both effective, and the actors also do a good job
transporting themselves not so much back to late-30's England as to the
way the movies portrayed it.
There's
not a whole lot to be said about Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day:
its' story is simple but fast-paced and its' characters will either resonate
with you or they won't. I really connected with them and the story's
mood of lightheartedness in the face of tough times. I particularly
recommend the movie to fans of McDormand and Adams, whose respective quiet
and manic energy fit together like puzzle pieces. It also doesn't
hurt if you're kinda squishy. |
