Column:
Pace, quickness define 'Pettigrew'
Published March 14, 2008
“Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” is being called a light comedy, as though a comedy needs some ill-defined “heft” to be worthwhile, but I think the problem is that the genre to which it aspires, the screwball comedy, has been considered more or less dormant since 1942. Make no mistake: The rarely attempted genre of “Bringing Up Baby” fame finally has a modern representative. “Pettigrew” adopts that Depression-era style’s manic tone, rapid dialogue and romantic idealism so effectively that, were it a little more Bowdlerized and a little less colorized, it could pass for a lost, brilliant Preston Sturges film.
Set just before World War II, the Miss Pettigrew in question is a governess (Frances McDormand) who’s been fired from every home in England and finds herself homeless and hungry on the streets of London. Her quest for a job and, more pressingly, a meal, leads her, one morning, to her former employment agency. Turned away, she steals a business card from her boss’s desk and presents herself to Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams), an air headed actress who, is juggling three men and completely unaware of how to live her own life. She is actually seeking a social secretary, but she seems more in need of Miss Pettigrew’s maternal instincts. Over the course of one day Pettigrew and Lafosse find romance and meaning for one another and push each other to chase after it.
In the screwball comedy proper it is typically a man and a woman occupying each of these roles, one a straight-laced soul who needs loosening up and the other a wild-and-free type who desires some stability, but “Pettigrew” somehow runs two screwball set-ups at once, with the female leads each advising one another on how to proceed when the inevitable romantic complications set in. It’s an incredible trick. These twin romances — one young and new, the other middle-aged and contemplative, each at a different pace and with different emphases — only amplify the movie’s screaming tempo and tight structure. Within this sparkling set-up there are actual round male characters, not the usual romantic comedy doormats, and for so “light” a movie, each character is well-motivated and believable.
Luckily, the actors are uniformly up to the wordplay-filled challenge. McDormand shows off her comedic skills, particularly in her covert attempts at getting a square meal, while still managing to ground this airborne movie in human emotion. Adams is under the most pressure — no role in the screwball comedy is more prestigious or important than the flighty leading lady — and succeeds here with a frenzied performance reminiscent of classic screwball leads like Myrna Loy or Carole Lombard.
If this is light comedy, American cinema should join its citizens on some kind of crash diet. “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” is a perfect screwball comedy; a throwback without seeming dated, and to chastise it for failing to meet some arbitrary “heaviness” quota is to miss a movie that achieves its entertaining aims perfectly.
