By Tom Elce • Aug 20th, 2008 • Filed under: Film Review, Hollywood, Movies, featured

Tom Elce reviews director Bharat Nalluri’s film that’s releasing this Friday in India.

Upon being being dismissed from her job, destitute ex-governess Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) goes on the hunt for new employment. Penniless and desperately needing work, she comes into contact with aspiring actress/lounge singer Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams), a young woman juggling her ambitions alongside a trio of different men. One (Phil, played by Tom Payne) has promised her a part in a West End play, another (Nick, played by Mark Strong), as a club owner, promises her wealth, and the third (Michael, played by Lee Pace) is her frustrated fellow lounge act, who - you guessed it - sees the beauty inside of her but has little of monetary value to offer. When Miss Pettigrew comes to Delysia’s aide in a compromising situation involving Phil and Nick, she’s promptly taken under the redhead’s wing, and thereby into a whole different world (complete with fashion shows, makeovers, parties and the like) as her supposed “social secretary.”

What follows - set over a single day - is akin to a shark attack in a Jaws sequel. In other words: thoroughly predictable. So the task becomes for Indian-born director Bharat Nalluri and screenwriters David McGee and Simon Beaufoy to enthuse proceedings with a mixture of nostalgia, humor and pleasantness. On these requirements, at least, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day delivers, the film’s predictable romantic comedy elements (love interests for both Guinevere and Delysia are so obviously portrayed we begin to hope the latter goes off with the worst of her threesome, if only to spice things us) broken up with great wit, especially in the two main characters’ first meeting, in which Phil remains in Delysia’s bed while Nick makes his way to the flat.

As a straightforward rags-to-riches film set amidst the Depression era, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is breezy and backwards, the London in with the characters live watered-down to satisfy anyone aboard the ride for light fun, the impending war that looms over them thrown away in the form of an early joke and not given appropriate treatment thereafter (not even when the planes start flying overhead and the alarms sound). The focus is more inward, strictly concerned with the personal lives of Pettigrew and Lafosse even if it fails to pull any surprises from under its sleeve.

That the at times self-aware writing is sharper than the average TV movie (for which the film otherwise fits the bill) and the people on-screen have their own authenticity amidst the fallacies of their alternative universe has a more positive effect. Delysia’s sexual sacrifices, for example, could just as well be that of a modern-day starlet trying to make it in Hollywood, and the emotional punch the storyline has in her realisation of her self-inflicted vulnerability is greater than anything else the film has to offer.

What prevents the film from being a sporadically sufficient piece of fluff, however, is the casting of lead pair Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. Though she’s essentially playing a middle-aged Cinderella of the ’40s, McDormand brings genuine nuance to her role, turning Miss Pettigrew into a likable and sympathetic character, whose detached approach to personal life might have doomed her to live out her days alone. Cast alongside her, Amy Adams is her usual wonderful self as Delysia, though her performance as the ditzy wannabe seems a little too similar to that she gave in 2007’s Enchanted for it to quite stack alongside McDormand’s more sensitive portrayal.

Shot with visual competence by director Nalluri and cinematographer John de Borman, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is an easy-on-the-eyes minor success, alternately complimented and hampered by the formulaic love stories at its core whose deeper meaning makes for a saving grace. Delysia’s love-square takes precedence over a more tentative romantic subplot involving Miss Pettigrew and fashion designer Joe (Ciarán Hinds), though its no more effective as a discovery of one’s self-worth. That the two women who simultaneously discover and acknowledge the flaws in their romantic lives become friends over the course of the film is the spine of Nalluri’s film, thankfully compensating for the film’s documented missgivings.

Because two of Delysia’s gentleman callers are so obviously using her for their own pleasure and the third is genuinely in love with her, the end result of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (at least with regards to her) is never in doubt. As such, anyone watching in anticipation of surprises or an altogether satisfying denouement will likely be disappointed, uplifted instead by the way the film manages to touch on some true notes as its conventional narrative unwinds. At the least, helmer Nalluri’s skillful directing suggests good things to come from a director whose workload to-date has mostly consisted of television episodes and low-key movies. At the very least, he has a skill when it comes to happy endings.

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