Film Reviews

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

• Rating:
• Director: Bharat Nalluri
• Starring: Amy Adams
• Details: UK / 92mins (PG).

Set during the onset of WWII, this lively comedy-drama sees a dishevelled McDormand play the titular character, a governess who after being fired unfairly from her previous job winds up being a social secretary for flighty actress Delysia Lafosse (Adams). Delysia is an ambitious girl who likes to keep her options open and to that end must keep her landlord (Strong), a play director Phil (Tom Payne) and her piano-playing lover Michael (Lee Pace) happy; it's up to Pettigrew to juggle Delysia's, and others, socialite lives. Think Jeeves And Wooster antics meets Mary Poppins and you're someway to imagining what this comedy is like. Nalluri and her writers David Magee and Simon Beaufoy (adapting Winifred Watson's novel) hope that Miss Pettigrew's very, very long scenes will whiz by with the use of the rapid-fire dialogue employed and they both succeed and fail. It does boast a decent cast who have a ball on screen - McDormand and Adams are fun while Hinds again shows why he's the best at understatement and Shirley Henderson can shoot the best 'stink eye' in the business - who kill themselves trying to make it work, but it's hard to figure out why this movie was made in the first place.

Review by Gavin Burke