the long hunger
by Douglas Messerli
David
Magee and Simon Beaufoy (screenplay, based on a novel by Winifred Watson), Bharat
Nalluri (director) Miss Pettigrew Lives
for a Day / 2008
Guinevere
Pettigrew (Frances McDormand), a vicar’s daughter, is clearly not suitable as a
nanny; as Bharat Nalluri’s likeable comedy begins, she has just been fired from
the third job in a row. Evidently she can handle the children but her
moralistic comments to their parents do her in. And Miss Holt at the job
placement agency is not about to give her another chance.
Broke and starving, Pettigrew picks up a
card meant for another job seeker and heads off to the wealthy address where
singer, would-be actress Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams) is residing, owned by her
club-owner boss, Nick Calderelli (Mark Strong). Pettigrew presumes the
position, as usual, requires her to be a nanny, and since Lafosse, expecting
another gentleman caller, cannot get her young “man” out of bed, the forceful
Miss Pettigrew charges into the room to awaken her new “responsibility”—only to
discover that the “naughty boy” is a grown man with an erect penis. Phil, the
theater-producing son of a wealthy father, has just spent what might describe
as a “casting couch”-night with Lafosse, who now supposes she is a shoo-in for
the lead role.
So begins the long hungry day for Miss
Pettigrew as she attempts to manage affairs for Lafosse, involved not only with
Nick and Phil, but also a young man, Michael Pardue (Lee Pace), with whom
Pettigrew has literally had a run-in a few hours earlier just as he was
released from prison. Michael, Lafosse’s pianist, who is desperate to marry
her, has evidentially been arrested after a drunken night where he has
attempted to break into the Tower of London to find a proper ring for his love.
As Lafosse’s social secretary, Pettigrew
is just bit more capable than being a nanny—if no other reason is that she does
have a tendency to intrude to others’ personal lives. Her attempts to lecture
the confused Lafosse, however, seem almost pointless since the singer lives in
a whirlwind of ridiculous actions that have a velocity of its own. Nonetheless,
elder woman does, time and again, save the day.
Lafosse, meanwhile, determines to “fix up” her
rather drably dressed new friend, and the two, accordingly, warm-up to one
another, bolstering both their out-of-order lives: if Pettigrew can help
Lafosse to make better decisions about love, Lafosse transforms her secretary
into a more beautiful, forgiving, and loving woman.
Using popular songs of the day such as
“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” “T’aint What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do
It),” “Anything Goes,” and “If I Didn’t Care” (sung quite “loverly” by Adams
and Pace), director Nalluri whips up an imitation of a screwball comedy like
those of the 1930s and 40s, in which the wealthy mindlessly weave in and of
each other’s lives, loving, hating, gossiping, and generally refusing to face
up to the realities of the day: the time, after all, is 1939, with England and
Germany about to go to war.
Other major figures, the snippy fashion
leader, Edythe Dubarry (Shirley Henderson) and lingerie designer Joe Blomfield
(Ciarán Hinds) round out a near-perfect cast, who, one by one, are drawn toward
Miss Pettigrew the way characters in Being
There are drawn to the clueless Chance, the Gardener. Only
Pettigrew—forgive the clichés, but the movie calls them up—gives far more
specific advice, helping Lafosse to perceive that the penniless pianist is the
“one for her,” and winning over the wealthy Joe Blomfield for “a man of her
own.”
The metaphor of this pleasant caper is
“hunger”; Lafosse and her kind are forever hungry for fame, love, and money,
while Pettigrew unsuccessfully tries time and again just to get a bite to eat
(only real sustenance in 24 hours is the cucumber rounds laid against her
eyes). Finally, at film’s end, Blomfield, asks if she’s eaten breakfast,
Pettigrew honestly responding that it has been a long time since she’s had
something to eat. In the end, she is the only one to get everything.
Los Angeles,
April 8, 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment