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Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

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BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

March 7, 2008

In the ramshackle romantic something-or-other, "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day," Frances McDormand plays an English secretary with a talent for unemployment.

As her name might suggest, Guinevere Pettigrew is as prim and old-fashioned as a doily, even by the standards of the film's 1939 London setting. Trapped beneath the frizzy schoolmarm hair and threadbare frock, however, is a stifled lover waiting to break loose.

The conduit for Guinevere's liberation is an American nightclub singer of modest talent and unbridled ambition named Delysia Lafosse (a frantic Amy Adams, setting the film's tone of comic desperation). Delysia has assembled a retinue of three boyfriends in the hope that at least one of them will propel her to West End theater glory: a caddish club owner (Mark Strong), a playboy producer (Tom Payne) and an impulsive-but-dreamy pianist (Lee Pace).

Passing herself off as Carole Lombard's social secretary, Guinevere finagles herself into Delysia's employ and soon finds herself stage-managing her boss' complicated love life. In return, Delysia treats Guinevere to a new wardrobe, a dour transformation that turns her into a benign-looking variation of Dame Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca."

Guinevere's halfhearted makeover is symptomatic of a comedy that tinkers with elements of other morphing heroines - a little Eliza Dolittle here, a little Cinderella there - without any of the transcendent joy that is supposed to come with the package.

Screenwriters David Magee ("Finding Neverland") and Simon Beaufoy have boiled a 1938 novel by Winifred Watson down to predictable romantic fantasy elements. Guinevere manages to overcome her underwhelming new look and lowlife past, attracting the attention of a dashing underwear designer (Ciarán Hinds) trying to wrest himself free of his witchy society wife ( Shirley Henderson).

There is never any doubt that Guinevere's fashionista Lancelot will prevail, just as we know that Delysia will choose the bargain-basement Prince Charming over the sure thing. The pleasure in these genre things is usually in the details, but "Miss Pettigrew" looks and feels like one of those third-tier period comedies the BBC churns out with numbing regularity. Director Bharat Nalluri compounds the chintziness with a full-throttle approach that blows away any lingering nuance from the source material.

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY (PG-13). Frances McDormand and Ciarán Hinds maintain their composure in this inept period comedy as a fuddy-duddy English social secretary and the gentleman who rocks her world. Amy Adams is out of control in the cliche role of an American floozy with show-biz dreams. Bharat Nalluri directs, with a bludgeon. 1:32 (partial nudity and innuendo). At area theaters.