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Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Can you get a life and discover love, all in one day? The vintage comedy Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, follows two women – dowdy Miss Pettigrew, played by Frances McDormand, and glamorous young starlet Delysia Lafosse – over the course of 24 life-changing hours
Set in London in 1939, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew is a middle-aged governess who finds herself unfairly dismissed from her job. Without so much as severance pay, Miss Pettigrew realises that she must – for the first time in two decades – seize the day. This she does, by intercepting an employment assignment as ‘social secretary’. Arriving at a penthouse apartment for the interview, Miss Pettigrew is catapulted into the glamorous world and dizzying social whirl of an American actress and singer, Delysia Lafosse, played by Amy Adams.
Within minutes, Miss Pettigrew finds herself swept into a heady high-society milieu and, within hours, living it up. Taking the social secretary designation to heart, she tries to help her new friend Delysia navigate a love life and career, both of which are complicated by the three men in Delysia's orbit; devoted pianist Michael, intimidating nightclub owner Nick, and impressionable junior impresario Phil.
Miss Pettigrew herself is blushingly drawn to the gallant Joe, a successful designer who is tenuously engaged to haughty fashion maven Edythe. She is the one person who senses that the new social secretary may be out of her depth, and plots to undermine her.
Over the next 24 hours, Guinevere and Delysia help each other to discover their romantic destinies.
The Academy Award-winning McDormand says, "This is a stylish and entertaining story about making choices and living with the consequences – and right away I could clearly see myself playing the title role."
The film is based on the novel of the same name by author Winifred Watson and was published in 1938. Watson wrote six novels in total and "was a bit ahead of her time," says producer Stephen Garrett. "Her books were about women changing their lives, flouting convention, and addressing class tensions and extramarital sex."
Producer Nellie Bellflower believes that "the power of Winifred Watson's story lies in its ability to make the reader happily believe that anything might be possible."
Producer Stephen Garrett came across the novel on its reissue in 2000 and says, "Miss Pettigrew embodies the dashed hopes and expectations of anyone whose life hasn’t quite worked out as they might have hoped it would.
He adds: "This rather prim woman with very little experience of the real world finds herself among a bunch of rather racy types. Over the course of the next 24 hours, she sorts out Delysia's life through sheer common sense and, rather wonderfully, her own life gets sorted too."
Frances McDormand observes, "Reading the book, I felt that Winifred Watson was telling us about women who in fact exist." Drawing not only from Watson's story but also from her own actor's instincts for her character, McDormand talks us through Miss Pettigrew's history. "She is a vicar's daughter and was brought up very properly. When she lost her fiancé in World War I, her life just kind of stopped and she had to go on to service as a governess. She still has her clothes that she got for her trousseau with the wedding.
"The one major script change I made was to get away from the idea that Miss Pettigrew's rhythm was one of reticence and shyness, and that she was incapable of finishing a sentence. My change was that she completed every sentence; Miss Pettigrew knows exactly what she thinks and what she wants to say – it's that people just don't hear her finish her sentence, because they don't realise she's there."
As part of the glamorous world into which she is propelled, Miss Pettigrew finds herself in the salon of Edythe DuBarry and is persuaded to undergo a makeover.
"Well," admits McDormand, "at the start of the story Miss Pettigrew is dowdy, with particularly uncontrollable hair. But when the mirror turns to reveal her new look, she is still the same person, just in different clothes. She discovers that it's not about getting rid of what she was before, but about fully inhabiting who she was before – and taking control of her life over the course of a day like no other in her life."
Simon Beaufoy, one of the film's two screenwriters, says, "At the start of the story, Miss Pettigrew is a very shy and neglected woman, seemingly good at nothing. She lacks money, she lacks resources, and is fired from her job. Yet when she unwittingly walks into this glamorous life she has only ever seen in the movies, she finds a place for herself through an innate ability she has to make the best of whatever is around her.
"She goes from being the least important person in the room to the most important person in the room. Not through money or looks, but because she is an innately good human being. She becomes like a magnet for people – like Delysia – who realise that they have become desperate to know how to sort out their lives. Trying to make the right moral decision in a complex set of circumstances is an eternal problem for us all."
Beaufoy's screen writing colleague David Magee explains: "While Delysia is willing to be whoever anyone wants her to be in order to become a star, Guinevere is willing to become what Delysia wants her to be – whether it's a personal assistant or referee in her affairs – because she's horribly poor.
"Yet Delysia doesn't judge Guinevere based on her looks – which is how she is judged all the time. With she and Guinevere becoming friends, Delysia is able to ask herself for the first time, 'what do I really want to do with my life?'. Guinevere meanwhile gains confidence, advising and supporting Delysia and realising that there is a second act in her own life."
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day opens in cinemas nationwide on Friday, August 15, 2008.
