Cynical Cinema

I like Frances McDormand a lot. Ever since Fargo, I am willing to watch whatever she does, even if it’s Laurel Canyon or Johnny Skidmarks. So this week I watched Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, and once again I was impressed. Frances McDormand continues to be one of the best actresses working today. This movie, however, was clearly more of a vehicle for Amy Adams, who became a movie star with the Disney film Enchanted last year. While McDormand plays the Miss Pettigrew of the title, and holds the film together with her performance as a prudish but desperate woman who takes a job as a “social secretary”, whatever that is, for Adams.

I said during Enchanted that it would have been a way better movie if Amy Adams had been naked. And that’s pretty much what you get with Miss Pettigrew. Well, it’s partial nudity, of the bubble-bath-covering-the-good-bits variety. But it really is similar in that Adams is basically playing the same character she played in Enchanted. Well, this is not entirely true. She is really playing Holly Golightly, the character made famous by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. The parallels between the two characters are obvious from the very beginning. They are both charming, seemingly airheaded socialites with a youthful zest for life, a cavalier approach toward men, and they are both clearly pretending to be something they’re not.

And Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day is clearly trying to be Breakfast At Tiffany’s for the new millenium. The film manages to capture the spirit of the films of the fifties and sixties, with the costumes and the parties and the upper crust people and the poor people in soup kitchen lines. It also shares a certain ethos that we don’t see in movies too often any more. If a man really loves a woman, he will pursue her to the end of the earth, fighting for her against the other men with whom she’s involved, even though he is only one of three men she is sleeping with. He doesn’t care that she’s basically a prostitute, as long as he’s the one who ends up with her. This just doesn’t happen in movies today. That’s why movies like Breakfast At Tiffany’s can seem very dated to an audience watching it now. It’s tough to watch the film now and not ask oneself - “why on Earth would George Peppard even want to end up with Holly Golightly? She’s irritating.” But, that was the tone of movies in those days. And it really works for Miss Pettigrew.

What doesn’t work for Miss Pettigrew is the last act. I really enjoyed the charm and whimsy and performances in the first hour, but the last twenty minutes really sagged. Of course, right from the very beginning of the film, we know who is going to end up with whom, and we also know exactly how it’s going to happen. It should come as no surprise when the movie ends. And it doesn’t. But watching everything unfold exactly as we know it will, with no surprises at all and no deviation from the end of so many similar movies, is rather disappointing. And even the stuff that IS a surprise is way too neat. The whole first hour of the movie has been setting up a major showdown where young Amy Adams will be forced to grow up and choose one man over the other two (we clearly know which one she will choose, right away). And part of that growing up process, we assume, will be to stand up, take responsibility, bite the bullet and break the hearts of the other two men. But at the last minute, both of those other men reveal themselves to be jerks, making the whole process incredibly easy for her. In fact, they make it entirely possible that she can, in the end, do exactly what she wants to do without taking any responsibility for herself or for her actions. She can just up and leave. Goodbye!

Despite the weak ending, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day is very good. Frances McDormand and Amy Adams can play these roles in their sleep, but they both put a lot of effort into creating two memorable characters. I almost said “unique”, but McDormand is the only one who is “unique”. Adams, really, is playing Audrey Hepburn. This film is worth watching just for the facial expressions of Adams and McDormand. They are a treat. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day comes out Tuesday, August 19th, from Alliance Films.

Margot At The Wedding is about a woman named Margot who goes to a wedding. It comes out from Alliance Atlantis on Tuesday the 19th of February and it’s sort-of worthwhile. Margot is played by Nicole Kidman, who is a very uptight, scathingly bitter-tongued ice queen. She drags her son along with her to her sister’s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) wedding to unemployed musician Jack Black. The dialogue is very smart, the acting is terrific, and the family is believable. The big problem with the movie is the lack of likeable characters. Kidman gets to her sister’s place, and immediately makes herself unlikeable as she attacks everything around her, questioning her sister’s choice in a husband, exacerbating the war between her sister and her neighbours, and visiting the man with whom she is having an affair. Jennifer Jason Leigh has just figured out she is pregnant, but hasn’t told anyone yet. She tells Kidman, who then tells her son, who then tells his cousin, who then asks her mom about it. The whole family harbours intense bitterness and hard feelings toward each other, much of which is not fully explained in the film.

A lot of scenes ring very true, especially in the little details. My favourite little detail is when Jason-Leigh’s young daughter tells Jack Black he has to hide his King Crimson album. It is the In The Court Of The Crimson King album (shown below), and I have had to do the same thing myself. It was initially up on the wall with the rest of my favourite vinyl albums. Welcome To My Nightmare, The Kids Are Alright, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, Over-Nite Sensation, The Melodians Rivers of Babylon, and King Crimson. But I had to take it down, because my wall of albums is in the area downstairs where the kids play, and it really freaked out our 8-year-old. I can certainly understand why. This is just one in the many small details in Margot At the Wedding that ring so very true. Which is an indication of the intelligence of the movie. And some of these scenes are very funny, especially the Jack Black scenes. This is the kind of movie that suits him best. Where he is not the centre of attention, where he does not have to carry the comedy all on his own, but where he can add understated fat-sloppy-guy comedy to understated prim-proper-people type scenes. Think of the scene in High Fidelity where he laments the fact that the customer does not own Blonde On Blonde.

But Margot at the Wedding can only go so far on wit and intelligence and fine performances. For most movies, that should be enough. But the one adult character who is actually likeable is John Turturro, as Kidman’s husband, and he shows up for about two minutes of screen time. So by the end, the movie’s message is a decent one - no matter how lousy things get, or how lousy life is, you always have family to count on. But after watching the whole thing, you think “not THIS family!” These poor kids! Jennifer Jason Leigh is a space case, Nicole Kidman is a passive aggressive, unfaithful, clingy jerk of a mother, and Jack Black is a slovenly, childish, out of control deviant. (Which is funny, but not exactly laudable.) You wouldn’t wish this family on anyone, and you end up feeling pretty sorry for the kids. With more Turturro, this movie could have potentially been a 9/10. As it stands, it is very smart, but tough to watch in parts. And it jsut feels like a standard, well-written, indie dark comedy with nothing new to say.