Mid-century high fashion and an irresistibly charming Lesley Manville add sparkle to the sweet, light-as-air MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS, an uplifting tale in which an older British house cleaner falls in love with a Dior dress and decides she must have one of her own. It is a grown-up fairy-tale that fits neatly into a familiar genre of British films dealing with the divide between the working class and the aristocratic one. Set in 1957, MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS also showcases mid-century couture fashion, with recreations of actual Christian Dior period dress designs, with other visual delights by costume designer Jenny Beavan, the creative force behind the fashions in last year’s CRUELLA.
An outstanding and nuanced performance by Lesley Manville lifts this film, and along with the wonderful mid-century period fashions, is the major enjoyment and reason to see this film, which is a sweet but unsurprising feel-good fantasy, despite a team of writers who tried to interject a little reality, with mixed results. Fans of Mike Leigh’s films and British dramas already know how excellent the talented Lesley Manville is, but she gained some wider recognition for her Oscar-nominated turn in PHANTON THREAD and hopefully with this film, that rise in recognition will continue.
In 1957 London, Ada Harris (Lesley Manville) has been waiting for her beloved husband Eddie to return from WWII, ever since the plane he was flying was shot down. Twelve years later, he still is listed as missing-in-action and Mrs Harris continues to hope for his return, as she ekes out a living by cheerfully cleaning the homes of more affluent people who hardly have any awareness of her beyond her job. The days of this sweet, kindly, unassuming working-class woman revolve around her work and life in her tiny basement apartment, although her lively best friend, neighbor and fellow cleaner Vi (Ellen Thomas) tries to draw her out.
One day, while cleaning the home of an aristocratic but cash-strapped client, the wife (Anna Chancellor) shows Mrs. Harris a beautiful Dior dress she just bought for an upcoming social event, despite being several weeks in arrears to her cleaner, a 500-pound purchase she plans to conceal from her husband. Instantly, Mrs Harris is smitten by the dazzling dress, and despite the high price, she determines to buy one for herself, as her one splurge in her drab life.
That she has nowhere to wear such a fancy dress does not matter to Mrs Harris. She sets out to scrimp and scrub to raise the money to buy her own Dior couture dress, despite the absurdity of a working-class cleaner spending her money to own such a expensive frock. That she has nowhere to wear a couture dress is brought up to her over and over again as she shares her dream, but it does nothing to dampen her ambition or ardor. With help from with her friend Vi (Ellen Thomas) and a roguish Irish bookie named Archie (Jason Isaacs), Mrs Harris finds a way to try to make her dream come through. After a few set-backs and some strokes of good luck, Mrs Harris does head for Paris and the House of Dior.
There is a lot of wish-fulfillment fantasy in director Anthony Fabian’s tale of later-life dreams, based on the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico. This is not the first filmed adaptation of Gallico’s story – in fact, it is one of several tellings of this working-class, middle-age fantasy. However, co-writers Carroll Cartwright, Olivia Hetreed and Keith Thompson worked on the script to inject some surprising, even sobering, moments of reality into the fairy tale sweetness, although with mixed results.
One of the refreshing parts of this story is Mrs. Harris’ single ambition. The down-to-earth Londoner only dreams of owning a fabulous dress, not remaking her life, social-climbing or finding late-life love. This gives her a freshness and grounding that Manville uses to give the character depth as well as making her lovable and inspirational. Of course, some of those other possibilities are raised along the way, but Manville’s performance elevates the character above the script.
Once in Paris, some of the script’s mix of reality and fantasy crops up, with the clueless, optimistic Mrs. Harris having no idea how to even get to House of Dior, much less any awareness of the audacity of her plan to simply walk in. But Manville ensures we can’t help both believe what happens and be charmed and amused by her character’s pluck, as her good-natured directness and kindness win her allies to help her to do just that.
But there are obstacles to overcome. Isabelle Huppert plays Dior’s stern manager and gatekeeper, Claudine Colbert, who tries to head off the working-class widow when Ada Harris tries to sit in on a showing of the new Dior collection. Huppert’s gatekeeper is overruled by a wealthy patron, the Marquis de Chassagne (Lambert Wilson), an Anglophile widower, who offers Mrs. Harris a spot as his plus-one as well as his arm, and by the surprising fact that the charwoman is planning to pay with cash – and flashes the bills to prove it – which persuades Dior’s accountant Andre (Lucas Bravo, EMILY IN PARIS) and even the designer himself (Philippe Bertin) to let her in, as cash-flow has been a bit of an issue of late.
Of course, we get a fashion show, and here costume designer Jenny Beavan gets to shine as audiences are treated to eye-candy in the form of diverse and gorgeous models in flood of beautiful period Dior couture, dresses recreated with the cooperation of House of Dior from their archival collections. Beavan supplements those visual delights with her own luscious designs, making the whole Paris sequence particularly colorful and visually pleasing.
Mrs. Harris expected she could pick out her couture frock and then zip back home, clueless about the need for fittings for the custom dress. But like in any good fairy tale, she gets help. Accountant Andre who offers her the use of his absent sister’s room in the Montmartre apartment they share, and she gets a ride there from model Natasha (Alba Baptista), whom the kindly Englishwoman helped when the model stumbled while rushing into the design house entrance, and who it turns out is the “face of Dior.” While arriving for daily fittings, Mrs. Harris endears herself to the Dior staff, particularly the seamstresses and ordinary workers (and being handy with a needle herself, even helps out a bit), becoming a kind of folk hero to them. However, the top tailor, Monsieur Carré (Bertrand Poncet), is less taken with the frank British cleaner, who makes no attempt to conceal her working class background, but Mrs. Harris is aided by showroom assistant Marguerite (Roxane Duran) who sees the positive effect the unstoppable Ada Harris has on the staff, and intercedes between the haughty master fitter and the working-class client.
Isabelle Huppert’s character is Mrs Harris’ nemesis but ironically, Manville nabbed her Oscar nom for her performance as a similarly chilly gatekeeper to a house of fashion in PHANTOM THREAD. An indication of Manville’s remarkable level of acting skill is in the smooth ease with which she fits into each role. While some have long been well aware of Manville’s considerable talents, PHANTOM THREAD raised the underappreciated Manville’s profile more generally, and hopefully she will at some point gain the same kind of recognition given similar talents like Judi Dench and Helen Mirren. In fact Manville’s performance far exceeds the film she’s in, exploring nuances and aspects of that character well beyond the simple plot.
All the supporting cast are good, although Huppert’s character is so brittle that she does not work as well as a foil for Manville as might be hoped. Lambert Wilson’s Marquis offers a hint of romantic possibility for Mrs Harris, and Lucas Bravo as shy accountant Andre and Alba Baptista as model Natasha offer a little budding romance, although their discussions of Sartre veer rather towards cringe-worthy. Ellen Thomas as Ada’s Caribbean-born pal and Jason Isaacs as an Irish charmer do well as Ada’s friends, although hampered by some unfortunate datedness in the characters.
MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS is a feel-good, all-ages tale with an uplifting and inspiring message, that might be too saccharine for some but which is elevated tremendously by a wonderful performance by Lesley Manville and also is filled with gorgeous delights for fashionistas.
MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS opens in theaters on Friday, July 15.
RATING: 2.5 out of 4 stars
