Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

The time and place are London in the late 1930s. The era of the flapper has faded and now the shadow of war is falling over a country mired in unemployment and poverty. Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand), a nanny with somewhat limited skills, finds herself homeless and jobless. She gets her meals from soup kitchens and sleeps in train stations. Luck places her in a position to steal a job from her former agency, but she misunderstands the nature of the position, thinking it's for a nanny when, in reality, it's for a social secretary. So, when she shows up at the door of actress/nightclub singer Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams), she is nonplused by what she finds. Mrs. Pettigrew is nothing if not adaptable and, in no time, she is bringing order to both Delysia's chaotic daily schedule and to her complicated love life. The beautiful young woman has three boyfriends: Nick (Mark Strong), the man who owns the flat where she lives; Phil (Tom Payne), the producer of a West End production in which she wants the lead role; and Michael (Lee Pace), a penniless piano player. No prizes for guessing which one is Prince Charming. Meanwhile, even as Mrs. Pettigrew irons out the wrinkles in Delysia's life, she becomes enmeshed in a romantic triangle of her own, caught between Edythe (Shirley Henderson), a cold, bitchy clothing store owner, and Joe (Ciaran Hinds), a suave, handsome lingerie designer.

There are two reasons why this movie works so effectively as a confection. The first is the screenplay, credited to David Magee and Simon Beaufoy and based on the novel by Winifred Watson. It understands the elements necessary to develop this simple mistaken identity premise into a feel-good fable. Chief among the strengths is the relationship between Miss Pettigrew and Delysia. As in all good buddy movies, each possesses strengths the other lacks. Delysia is the free-spirit, imbued with life and energy. Miss Pettigrew provides grounding and perspective. They complement and teach each other. Male buddy movies in general tend to do this yin-and-yang thing better than female ones; this is an exception.

The second reason relates to casting. There are no misfires. Every actor fulfills his or her role solidly. Adams enchants as a delightful flibbertigibbet, and the always reliable Frances McDormand is her perfect opposite. Lee Pace, one of the stars of the TV series Pushing Daisies, has all the right qualities for Delysia's romantic partner, chief of which is likeability. And Ciaran Hinds puts aside his recent string of unsympathetic portrayals to call upon the charm he employed a decade ago in Persuasion. Edythe, Miss Pettigrew's villainess (to the extent that she can be considered such) isn't bad-to-the-bone, and Shirley Henderson plays her with a hint of humanity.

--James Berardinelli, reelviews.net

92 minutes

PG-13 (for some partial nudity and innuendo)