Amy Adams, Frances McDormand stir up fun in 'Miss Pettigrew'

(B+) In Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, making whoopee is divine but sisterhood is powerful. This screwball frolic set in 1939 London stars Amy Adams as would-be West End headliner Delysia Lafosse and Frances McDormand as Miss Pettigrew, the failed governess who winds up as her social secretary.

It's an unusual and engaging romantic comedy because it's mostly about how these women ready each other for real love. Their friendship is the fulcrum on which success with men is based.

Guinevere Pettigrew, a curate's daughter who goes bust as a nanny, insinuates herself out of a soup line and into the employment of Lafosse, who only looks like a dizzy dame (albeit a sparkling one). Lafosse is actually a robust woman who takes uncomplicated delight in the natural pleasures of sex and the artificial ones of big-city culture. She's the rare creature who can be totally herself in nightclubs and fashion shows -- which makes her just the right gal to rejuvenate Miss Pettigrew, who has cut herself off from frivolity for so long that her pleasure quotient is close to zero and her affections are running on empty.

Adams plays Lafosse with the wit of that Cole Porter song from Kiss Me, Kate, "I'm Always True to You Darling in My Fashion." She boasts serial emotional authenticity. She has a genius for juggling lovers, including a budding theatrical producer, Phil (Tom Payne); a hard-guy nightclub owner, Nick (Mark Strong); and the piano-player in her club act, Michael (Lee Pace of TV's Pushing Daisies). Monsieur de ... in Max Ophuls' masterpiece The Earrings of Madame de ... said, "Our marriage is only superficially superficial"; that's true about Lafosse's hookups, too. She merges her own ambitions and dreams with each man of the moment -- whether it's Phil, the whelp who might make her a star with his new revue, "A Pile of Pepper," or Nick, the commanding man of the world who backs his machismo with money.

Deep down, Lafosse knows that Michael, the least connected of the three, is her true love -- but to embrace him she must overcome her own fear of the gutter. Miss Pettigrew is the perfect source of reinforcement: Lafosse doesn't know it, but Pettigrew picked herself out of the gutter when she filched Lafosse's card from an employment agency and shows up to fill her vacancy.

Adams' Lafosse is a whirlwind; McDormand's Pettigrew is the eye of the storm. She's enthralled by the way anyone stylish or confident enough can crash London's showbiz and fashion worlds -- it's a democracy of the elegant and the glitzy. But she also knows that breeziness, ambition and gamesmanship -- the fuels of this emotional economy -- can blow smoke through a person's core. She's got a truth-detector that goes off even when she's lying merrily for her new friend.

What detonates the comedy is the way these actresses play off each other physically. Adams, a paragon of originality, can even be curvy in individualistic ways. She's marvelously innocent at striking a statuesque pose behind a bath towel, yet she can also melt into a fur coat. And her walk is a wiggly masterpiece: She can pivot her torso when she's in the middle of a forceful stride. McDormand is like a willowy reed who turns out to be made of spun steel. Every emotion around her registers with a twang; her emotional and spiritual hungers are as palpable as her longing for food when she's starving (which she is for most of the picture).

Lafosse and Pettigrew are emotionally alive in different but illuminating ways -- they're complements, not opposites. When Michael realizes that the way to win Lafosse's heart is to make her partner him on that great Jack Lawrence song (and Ink Spots hit), "If I Didn't Care," Adams delivers it beautifully -- she cracks your heart when her voice breaks on the line, "And would I be sure this is love beyond compare?" But what amplifies the scene emotionally is McDormand's silent satisfaction as Pettigrew watches her friend's love story unfold with the song. And watching Pettigrew is the great Ciaran Hinds as a guy named Joe, a lingerie designer who may turn out to be the man for Pettigrew. Pace makes a good impression as a leading man -- he's a bit like Clive Owen Lite -- but Hinds gives the male performance of the movie; he brings out the virility of patience and understanding.

Working multiple turns on the deligfhtful light-comic novel by Winifred Watson (first published in 1938 and reissued in 2000), the director, Bharat Nalluri, and the screenwriters, David Magee and Simon Beaufoy, pepper the film with glittery cameos -- Shirley Henderson, who stole the show in Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvey, is a stand-out as a lacquered salon-owner and woman of ambition. And they create pratfalls that are slapstick Freudian slips. They exploit the time period for the improbable color combinations and designs of art deco and a sense of gathering storm clouds.

While the others gape at the sight of planes preparing for a devastating air war, Joe and Miss Pettigrew mourn the losses of the Great War and savor what it taught them about life. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is an improbably airy entertainment: It's like a cheery 1930s pop song with lyrics about innocence and experience.

Related topic galleries: Cole Porter, Mike Leigh, Frances McDormand, Popular Music, Shirley Henderson

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