Every once in a great while a film comes along that reminds you of the zany screwball comedies of yesteryear and the witty, rat-tat-tat dialogue of a long-abandoned way of writing. Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day is such a movie, a film of sparkling intelligence and incandescent humor that feels as if it was just yesterday plucked from a vault where it had mistakenly been shelved for the past sixty or so years.

The place is London. The time is 1939; the eve of World War II. Miss Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand), a middle-aged governess whose life is as unkempt as her mangy appearance, is out of a job. Destitute, Miss Pettigrew swipes an employment assignment far outside her comfort level: social secretary to the ravishingly beautiful American actress and singer, Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). Suddenly Miss Pettigrew finds herself catapulted into a heady social world of glitz and glamour.

But the beautiful Delysia is in a bind. She’s involved in a love quadrangle between the young theatre impresario Phil (Tom Payne), who has promised her the lead in his latest play; menacing nightclub owner Nick (Mark Strong), who pays for her luxurious penthouse; and devoted but penniless pianist Michael (Lee Pace), who wants desperately to marry her.

As Miss Pettigrew, who describes herself as an “expert on the lack of love,” tries to help her new friend navigate her career and love life, she is drawn to a gentlemanly fashion designer (Ciarán Hinds) who is tenuously engaged to haughty fashion maven Edythe Dubury (Shirley Henderson), the one person who suspects Miss Pettigrew may not be everything she pretends to be. While Miss Pettigrew and Delysia come to discover they are more alike than either of them realized, they must also risk everything to find love before it is too late.

Miss Pettigrew’s cast is impeccable. There is no other actress who can so magically light up a screen as the effervescent Amy Adams. From Junebug to Enchanted, the vivacious Adams has cemented a place as the funniest, most genuine and talented young actress working today. Frances McDormand, who played the unflappable Marge Gunderson in Fargo, has been absent from the screen the past few years but returns in radiant style. And Lee Pace, lately of television’s scrumptious Pushing Daisies, is simultaneously suave and brittle (and does a heck of a British accent) as the man pining for Delysia’s love.

Literate, uproarious and wise, Miss Pettigrew is a joyous romp of an experience with a generous power over both our heartstrings and our funny bones. Indian director Bharat Nalluri who has, up to this point, only directed television, delivers a sensuous treat set to the breezy, swinging sounds of big band jazz sure to keep him working well into the future.

A delicious spring release in a season usually reserved for the year’s celluloid flotsam, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is sure to be one of the year’s most enjoyable films.

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.