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Lee Pace as Michael and Amy Adams as Delysia star in Miss Pettigrew |
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - A bit hit and miss
MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY
Directed by Bharat Nalluri
Certificate PG
CHAMPAGNE for breakfast, lunch and tea: this tale of a dowdy governess trailing around after a bright young thing in 1930s London should be a ball.
But Miss Pettigrew’s life-changing day with an upstart actress who enjoys male company feels like a shrieky school play.
Miss Pettigrew is a half-starved domestic drudge who has staggered from one bad position to another. No household wants this vicar’s daughter moping about after their children. And when her employment agency says they don’t have anything for her, and probably never will again, she takes matters into her own hands, steals an appointment from the desk of the agency’s unpleasant boss and skedaddles off to a rather tasty central London block of mansion flats.
It transpires that her charge is not a minor, but a big child in the guise of Delysia La Fosse, a lady in need of a social secretary to help balance her many lovers. Miss Pettigrew learns a thing or two about the permissive society La Fosse inhabits, and, in turn, shares some of her own worldly wisdom.
This film did very well over the Pond, and has, I am reliably informed, developed a somewhat cultish status among Anglophiles. They like the accents and the frivolous, supposedly Wodehousian atmosphere. But sadly this adaptation of a rather friendly little book does not quite work, and lacks any of PG’s skill at developing a gentle social farce.
Amy Adams as lead Delysia is ravishing as she flounces about in her silk underwear, but she is a little too twittery to be able to be endured for any length of time. Frances McDormand, who wooed us all in the Coen brothers’ Fargo, knows what she is doing as Pettigrew, but after a while her pinched mouth dispensing nuggets of wisdom is just not enough to hold attention.
I also have to say that whenever Shirley Henderson, who plays vile fashionista Edythe, opened her mouth, I had to grit my teeth. There is a strong air of pushy drama school swot about her.
It speaks volumes that the star of the big scene when Pettigrew meets her impish charge for the first time is the hotch-potch, art-deco sitting room the encounter takes place in: three cheers for the set designer – they have sourced some wonderful chairs, lamps and objets d’art. Otherwise, sadly, Miss Pettigrew’s big day is too much like a wet August bank holiday. |
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