Man, Where Has This Been All My Life?

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

I don’t know what the upper limit of flibbertygibbetitude actually is, but Amy Adams has to be approaching it. In Catch Me If You Can, in Junebug, certainly in Enchanted, and now in Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, she’s portrayed (delightful) variations on a sunny, childlike creature whose eye seems eternally shot with a Photoshop twinkle filter. The notion that an actor has to have range is a little overrated, I’ve always thought, leading as it does to things like Julia Roberts in Mary Reilly and Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich. The reason Amy Adams has done this so much is that she’s amazing at it, and this movie is just another example of her ability to elevate an average movie by brute force. Brute, effervescent force.

Based on a 1938 Winifred Watson novel rediscovered in the UK after a 2000 rerelease, Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day is a sort of Cinderella subtype, where Cinderella is also Mary Poppins. Dowdy, brokedown Miss Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) is a bad governess who stumbles, Wacky-Misunderstanding-style, into a job as the social secretary to Delysia Lafosse (Adams). Delysia is a giggly, fickle club singer living a posh life and simultaneously being romanced by a callow young West End producer (Tom Payne), a controlling sugar daddy (Mark Strong), and her adorably scruffy pianist (Lee Pace of Pushing Daisies). You get zero points for figuring out which of those men is the right one for Delysia, and zero additional points for seeing the writing on the wall when Miss Pettigrew herself meets a charming, dignified designer (Ciaran Hinds) who’s tied up with a bratty little opportunist (the delicious Shirley Henderson, who was one of Bridget’s pals in Bridget Jones’s Diary). Of course, Miss Pettigrew also receives a makeover, which is mandatory.

The body of the movie, which takes place in the days leading up to World War II and places Adams in a parade of period outfits that are pretty great to look at, follows Delysia and Miss Pettigrew as they spend this one day together — a day in which, of course, momentous occasions are scheduled, amazing coincidences coincide, and romantic attachments are made and broken. There’s nothing unexpected here; if you’re waiting for it to be more than a wisp of a story around which two good actresses get to wind two good performances, you’ll likely be disappointed. But it’s executed well, and if you see the commercials and believe you might like it, you probably will.

I noticed that around the five-minute mark, as Adams flitted around her gorgeous London flat in an impeccable silk robe while the cheery music muscled me into the mood, I thought to myself, “I’m enjoying this, and yet, I feel like it’s going to be…kind of a long movie.” They’re smart to leave off at 92 minutes — about as short as an American feature can get away with being, unless it’s a kids’ movie. With this kind of project, the right approach is to get in and get out and not overreach, and they’ve done that well.