Pleasantly untaxing: Mrs Harris Goes to Paris reviewed

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris is a comedy-drama based on the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico about a cheerful, kind-hearted Battersea charlady who falls in love with a couture dress from Dior, decides she must have one of her own, and off she goes.

This is a familiar type of British film. It’s similar in spirit to, say, Florence Foster Jenkins or Paddington or The Duke or that golf one with Mark Rylance. It isn’t but could have been directed by Stephen Frears. It stars Lesley Manville but it could have starred Julie Walters. We know the ingredients and how the recipe will turn out. But it is Lesley Manville, and the dresses are knockout, and there are worse ways to spend nearly two hours. You could be watching Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, remember.

Gallico is probably most remembered for his second world war novella The Snow Goose and his children’s book about Thomasina (a cat). But, surprisingly, he also wrote The Poseidon Adventure. That adaption was one of the first films I saw at the cinema and I’m still sad that Shelley Winters didn’t make it out alive. He also penned four books about his beloved Mrs Harris, who was sold to America as ‘Mrs ’Arris’, which seems unforgiveable somehow, but there you are. The first book, which takes her to Paris, begins in London which, here, is all browns and greys and dim lighting. Mrs Harris is a war widow who lives quite a small life. She has a friend, Vi (Ellen Thomas), and there’s an Irish bookie (Jason Isaacs) who clearly has a soft spot for her. But mostly she’s a cleaning lady who ‘does’ for rich people in Chelsea. ‘What would I do without you, Mrs Harris?’ they all purr, while treating her abominably.

She spots the Dior dress in one of their homes. It’s floral and appliquéd and it shimmers. Mrs Harris has never seen anything so beautiful, and chances are neither have you. (The film hugely benefits from the breathtaking couture of Jenny Beavan, the three times Oscar-winning costume designer.) She’s told that it cost £500 – I think that’s around £10,000 in today’s money – yet she’s determined to have one. It’s mad, but as Mrs Harris will say of herself: ‘I’ve spent too long on my own, wishing my life away.’

She scrimps, saves, gambles at the dog track, manages to raise the cash and finally arrives in Paris. But there are obstacles. The House of Dior has a snooty directress (Isabelle Huppert) who won’t let Mrs Harris anywhere near. (Manville, you may recall, played a similar role in Phantom Thread, also set in a 1950s fashion house.) Mrs Harris hadn’t realised she couldn’t buy a dress there and then, and would have to stay in Paris for fittings. But other staff take a shine to her, and there are side adventures, and everyone benefits from her warmth and kindness. She plays Mrs Fixit to a Sartre-reading model (Alba Baptista), a shy Dior accountant (Lucas Bravo, the hot one from Emily in Paris) and a lonely Marquis (Lambert Wilson). She even wins over the snooty Huppert. And guess what? She ends up saving the House of Dior itself!

The film is directed by Anthony Fabian, who is in quite a rush to tie everything up in a feelgood bow during the final half-hour. It’s all entirely predictable, and it could be funnier, and it sometimes feel like a children’s film. I don’t know why it has a PG Certificate; the worst thing Mrs Harris ever says is: ‘Gordon Bennett!’

But it is handsomely mounted, Manville mostly keeps the sentimentality under control, and if you are in the mood for something pleasantly untaxing you will be pleasantly untaxed. Also, it’s a film driven by the will and ambition of a woman in her sixties, and you don’t get many of those to the pound.