Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Sadly many films that aim to be several genres at once often fail to do one effectively. This tends to happen when many independent films bite off more than they can produce.

This is not that film.

What writers David Magee and Simon Beaufoy, and director Bharat Nalluri have translated from Winifred Watson's novel is easily three or four different genres blended with such a smooth transition, the audience leaves with the best notes of each kind of film still lingering for the walk home.

This is a rare thing, and more than an average amount of credit is due to a heavenly cast of veteran stage performers who know how to use the mood of their dialog and the physical effects of the set, which makes for a classic comedy-drama. The kind your grandmother still invites you over to watch with the cola and peanuts.

At times not a single word is used to produce a story that is at once old fashioned and everything we like about modern love. The only difficulty here was attempting to find the bad acting, which would sink any other script, but only proves the ice in the shaker for the rest of the subtle performances that are able to ride the lift of an otherwise superb casting and directing job.

Amy Adams is playing her stock role from "Enchanted," but the fact that she's so good at it only adds to the experience of seeing her so expertly peek out from behind it. We see her drop the mask like a rock for the camera in realistic rubber band friction of her real inner workings slipping beneath all that glittering pressure. Just what such a role needs. The girl could float the Titanic. Being the star of this film is more the the strawberry icing on top of Umpa-Loompa ville.

To say that Adams is fantastic might wilt any chances for the other half of this odd couple comedy, but Frances McDormand is completely up to the task, so deft at handling slapstick that could have been ruinous that she is still carrying the laugh well into the next beat. With any joke inexperienced enough to fly too closely during one of her scenes, the real joke isn't the joke at all, but a statement all hers for how she carries it. The woman wouldn't float the Titanic, she'd make us laugh at it while it went down. And we would, god help us.

Lee Pace paints a scorching romantic underdog lead, equally able to cary a scene with body language alone, and Shirley Henderson plays a heartfelt ice queen / poor little gold digger to the resigned lingerie designer of veteran Ciarán Hinds. While Henderson and Hinds aren't readily believable together, in a way they aren't supposed to be, and instead Hinds plays the older gentleman in love with such excellent timing and reserve the story ends not with the sense of snapped up passion, but the quiet, Sunday kind of love that Etta James would sing. Somehow sweeter for the tasteful lack of saccharine.

He's currently playing poker on Broadway with Conleth Hill, David Morse, Sean Mahon, and Jim Norton in Conor McPherson's black Irish comedy "The Seafarer" -- one of the best shows to hit town all season. Morse can still do edgy and transformative work like "Dancer In The Dark," while Jim Norton plays a drunk worthy of George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove.

If only more films and plays like this came along.