The Cinema of the Four

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

It is an unchanging condition of Hollywood that leading men tend to get the better pay, the longer careers, the plum promotion. As liberal and forward-thinking as that world likes to consider itself, it is still driven by marketing choices that are as backward as any rural hayseed. A good case in point would be this weekend’s “Leatherheads” – George Clooney’s latest populist film to make a little cash before turning to more artistic and less profitable concerns. It hardly takes a consulting movie investigator to seek that movie out – previews are everywhere and corrugated cardboard advertising stand-ups the size of small houses adorn theaters.

But at the same time, a second period comedy called “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” has slipped quietly into theaters. It’s prime roles are filled by two of the best actresses in movies today, Frances McDormand (whom even a non-movie expert might recall from “Fargo”) and Amy Adams (likewise from “Enchanted”), at their most agreeable. The pair so dominate this comedy with their mutual screen presence that one can’t imagine the script ever having been written without them in mind. It’s a lively tale of an out-of-work British governness and an aspiring American actress/singer who wind up spending a single day together that changes both their lives.

Seems pretty ordinary sounding, doesn’t it? Kind of like the standard local dinner theater fare, one might think. But like Miss Pettigrew (McDormand) and her newfound friend Delysia Lafosse (Adams), there is nothing ordinary about this film. Add in Lee Pace from television’s “Pushing Daisies,” proving he can be just as quirkily charming on the big screen as the small one, and the movie has moments of sheer sparkle, tempered, when history asserts itself into the light comedy, with warm wisdom -- both qualities coming out in its two leads.

It’s a shame that men don’t follow actresses the way a lot of women follow George Clooney . . . I suspect “Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day” might do much bigger box office. Highley recommended.

What Great-grandfather Sherlock might have said:
“. . . carted about London in one day, it is no great wonder that our trail should have been crossed. “