AS LIGHT AND iridescent as a soap bubble and, like it, eternally in danger of popping, ?Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day? is cinematic entertainment at its frothiest. A 90-minute romantic-comedy where everything happens within 24 hours, the movie has a thin, convoluted plot and a zippy pace that can leave an action thriller in the dust.

Set in London on the eve of World War II, the film is based on the 1938 novel by Winifred Watson and brings to life a carefree, glitzy era that has the same innocent feel as PG Wodehouse?s depictions of the Edwardian age.

Cabaret singer

Directed by Bharat Nalluri, it stars Frances McDormand as the prim and polite titular character, a governess down on her luck who finds herself becoming the social secretary of a ditzy, twittery American cabaret singer determined to make it big in the West End.

The ambitious musical star-wannabe is Delysia Lafosse, played with bubbly, wide-eyed charm by Amy Adams. It?s an archetypal pairing up?the dour and drab spinster character and the giddy bimbo?but McDormand and Adams aren?t content to color their characters with just one shade. It is the nuances of their performances and the complexity they manage to give their characters that engage viewers? attention and make the production more than just another glossy period piece.

Squeezing all the action into just one day, the movie has characters stepping in and out of scenes and one comedic complication after another. It has the feel of a theatrical farce, but lacks the irony?so, there are times when it seems that the contrivances are piled on too thick.

Nalluri?s comic timing isn?t as well-honed as that of his two leads, who, just when the movie seems about to fall flat on its face, save the day with a particularly well-timed arch of a brow (McDormand) or a breathless, gesture-punctuated speech (Adams). Other notable performances that add breadth are delivered by Shirley Henderson as Delysia?s caustic boutique-owner friend, Edythe Dubarry, and Ciaran Hinds, who plays Dubarry?s lingerie-designer fiancé, Joe.

Its frantic pace notwithstanding, ?Miss Pettigrew? has its still moments where the characters seem to retreat from the superficiality of their world and reveal something true about themselves. Those brief, quiet flashes give this meringue of a movie a bittersweet core.