American Idle
MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY
Running Time 92 minutes
Directed by Bharat Nalluri
Written by David Magee and Simon Beaufoy
Starring Amy Adams, Frances McDormand, Ciaran Hinds
Bharat Nalluri’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, from a screenplay by David Magee and Simon Beaufoy, is based on Winifred Watson’s 1938 novel, which was rapturously received in its 2000 reprinting by Persephone Books. Watson (1907-2002) wrote six novels, and as co-producer (with Nellie Bellflower) Stephen Garrett observed about the author and her oeuvre, she “was a bit ahead of her time. Her books were about women changing their lives, flouting convention, and addressing class tensions and extramarital sex.”
This proto-feminist message is clearly the point of this current release, filmed at the Ealing Studios in London, reportedly the oldest film studio site in the world. What we have plot-wise in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a double Cinderella story, with an older woman, played by Frances McDormand, and a younger version, played by Amy Adams. Ms. McDormand undertakes the title role of Miss Pettigrew, a recently fired governess who has hit rock bottom in her life, with no money with which to buy food or pay for a place to sleep. She receives no encouragement from her employment agency contact, who looks disapprovingly at Miss Pettigrew’s chimney-sweep appearance, with a drab dress and hopelessly messed-up hair, and pronounces her client unemployable. Taking one last desperate chance to restart her life, Miss Pettigrew steals an employment interview card from her contact’s desk and shows up at the penthouse of an American pop star, Ms. Adams’s Delysia, for a job interview as a social secretary. Miss Pettigrew is almost immediately enmeshed in Delysia’s complicated love life, which consists of secretly balancing three male admirers at the same time without dropping any or letting anyone learn about the other two. The three suitors are Michael (Lee Pace), who has the least to offer her materially but the most to offer emotionally; Phil (Tom Payne), the son of a fabulously wealthy theater producer; and Nick (Mark Strong), a hypnotically overpowering club owner and Delysia’s current employer.
Somehow Miss Pettigrew manages to impress the ditzy Delysia Lafosse with her level-headed show of authority under the pressure of getting one lover out of her bed and out of her apartment before a second lover can find out about the first. Shades of the old Feydeau slamming-door farces! To show her gratitude for Miss Pettigrew’s services, Delysia takes Miss Pettigrew out shopping for a new dress and a complete makeover. In return, Miss Pettigrew wisely advises Delysia to follow her heart instead of her career opportunities in choosing a permanent partner.
For her part, the made-over Miss Pettigrew convincingly catches the eye of her own mature Prince Charming, Joe (Ciarán Hinds), a middle-aged dress designer and the fiancé of the younger Edythe (Shirley Henderson), an obnoxious know-it-all who immediately senses the arriviste in Miss Pettigrew but never poses any real threat to the burgeoning romance.
The sad and unexpected disappointment in the film arises from Ms. Adams’s leaden Delysia, despite her credible rendition of a torch-song duet with Michael that heralds her final romantic decision. Unfortunately, her overall characterization of Delysia is less fittingly bubbly than what the French denigrate in performances as trop appliqué. And this surprised me after my liking her enormously in Junebug and Enchanted. Perhaps the fault lies as much or more in the script and direction, which required a Lubitschian or Ophulsian touch to enshrine both the feelings and folly of a bygone era. As it is, Ms. McDormand gives more than her part requires, and Ms. Adams considerably less. For example, Ms. McDormand manages to be heartbreakingly hilarious as one chance to ease her palpable hunger after another comes to grief through no fault of her own. Making an audience almost laugh when it wants to cry requires a delicate acting skill possessed by very few performers. Indeed, the fragile subtlety of the pas de deux of Ms. McDormand and Mr. Hinds is alone worth the price of admission.
