MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY
Movie (2008), 92 min
Director: Bharat Nalluri



This goofy movie, set in just-before-WWII London, is about a woman who can’t make it as a nanny/governess and essentially cons her way, by “omission” of certain facts, into a day as the “social secretary” for a young, ambitious American actress.

Frances McDormand, as Miss Guinevere Pettigrew, is both a fright and a jewel. She carries off dropping her plate in a soup kitchen with the same startled distress she shows the next day, when a fancy catered snack slides off her plate at a party. Distress because she’s hungry throughout the movie; startled because she’s lost another chance to eat. McDormand is funny.

The young American actress, Delysia, who is juggling three men as nimbly as she can toss them, is played by Amy Adams. She is so frothy it’s hard to believe this is the same actress who played the doubly serious Sister James in “Doubt,” but she pulls it off. Nick, whose elegant flat she occupies, is a slick night club operator, played old-style Mafia-like. Handsome Lee Pace, the pianist Delysia sings with, is an Irishman with tickets to New York. Naturally, Delysia’s third man, a playboy spending Daddy’s money on a show, flits about in the mix somewhere.

All is fairly predictable. There’s even a high-powered lingerie designer to take an interest in our Guinevere. You can see the end coming pretty clearly before too long into the movie, but . . . there are some surprises.

The middle drags a bit and overplays the Guinevere-needs-food bit from time to time, but altogether this is a romp. I enjoyed it. If you like happy endings where the fools get theirs, this movie is for you.