MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS

I fell in love with actress Leslie Manville when she played the complicated character of Lydia Quigley on the TV series Harlots. As the central character in Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris she plays an extremely different type of character, but still provides a splendidly nuanced performance as kind-hearted Ada Harris.

Mrs. Ada Harris is a woman who earns a meager living by cleaning houses and providing seamstress services in 1950s London. Though she is often taken advantage of by her clients, she works hard and has a few close companions who provide her with support and genuine friendship. But her life changes the day she sees a Christian Dior dress that one of her clients has purchased. For the first time since learning her husband died in the war, Ada finds she is capable of having a dream. Her dream is that she will buy and wear a haute couture Christian Dior dress of her own.

It's a bit fanciful and stretches credibility when she manages to get a seat in the showing of Dior’s 10th-anniversary collection despite the objections of snooty Dior director Claudine (Isabelle Huppert). After this little suspension of belief, the magic begins to happen as Ada experiences the show and simultaneously becomes something of a cause celebre for the workers at Christian Dior who rally to her defense. This is a period of economic shift in France and the working class are striking and feeling taken advantage of. Mrs. Harris comes to be seen as the "everyman" enjoying the fruits of her hard work in the same way each of them would like to experience, if only occasionally.

The Cinderella theme is a common one in movie making. Yet it is a rarity when it is done so well that you don’t mind knowing there is most assuredly the oncoming inevitable cliche happy ending. With Mrs. Harris, you don’t want the ending to arrive, because the journey is such a splendid one. The cinematography is spectacular, the period costumes topnotch, and with Leslie Manville as lead and director Anthony Fabian at the helm, what might have simply been a whimsical modernized fairytale instead becomes rich storytelling excellence. It’s good to have dreams, and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris reminds us of that beautifully and most refreshingly.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris made my 2023 must-see-film list by way of recommendation. It turned out to be a superb recommendation!