It's a period film, a comedy, a romance and a life lesson all rolled into one – a stagey, deliberately theatrical throwback to gentler times, fashions and people.

Yet while it harks back to a lost world – it is set in 1939, immediately prior to the start of the Second World War –
it also emerges as a timeless portrait of desperate people trapped by convention and yearning for a chance at happiness.

Both a fairytale and a flight of fancy, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day leaves audiences enriched and smiling, not least because of the delicious performance from Frances McDormand as Guinevere Pettigrew.

Miss Pettigrew, a dowdy, middle-aged governess, finds herself out of her depth when circumstances propel her headlong into a job as social secretary to American actress Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams).

Within moments, she is thrust into a world she had only ever glimpsed from the outside. She has to choose: will she sink or swim? She opts for the latter and is soon guiding the ambitious but gauche Delysia through a minefield of beaux and rivals while falling headlong for Joe (Ciarán Hinds), a successful and gentlemanly designer caught in a relationship with the scheming fashionista (Shirley Henderson).

Based on the bestselling '30s novel by Winifred Watson, Miss Pettigrew... illustrates how the lives of several shallow people are changed over the course of one eventful day and how true love reigns supreme.

This is an ensemble film with a superb central performance from McDormand as the prim, well-meaning, slightly chaotic, common-sense heroine who always seems to be in the right place at the right time. McDormand can do no wrong with her reading of the role, equally (and effortlessly) drawing comedy and pathos from the part.