Mark Reviews Movies: MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Focus Features

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 14, 2022

A little bit of kindness goes a relatively long way for Ada Harris, whose mundane and difficult life gets a pleasant push in Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. The film is the first big-screen adaptation of the character created by author Paul Gallico, who wrote a total of four novels revolving around this London cleaning woman with a big heart, some simple dreams, and a way of looking at people and the world that belies her circumstances and the cynicism of society. In casting Lesley Manville as the effortlessly charming charwoman, co-writer/director Anthony Fabian might have guaranteed that we see at least another of Mrs. Harris' adventures in the near future.

Manville is an absolute delight here, playing a character of such thorough and unflappable decency, thoughtfulness, and compassion, without making that character come across as an intruding goody-goody, a living saint, or some other unfortunate quality of insistence that would undermine the whole point. We believe her as a good-hearted person, a pragmatic and slightly cheeky member of the working class, and a slightly melancholy but endlessly hopeful dreamer. Those dreams are just innocently selfish enough that we only want those rewards for her. Part of the intrinsically good nature of this sweet little tale is how the universe itself seems to want that for her, too.

The plot is so simple that the title more or less gives away the whole affair. Ada, a presumed—and soon confirmed—widow whose husband went missing during the war, lives in a nice-enough flat in London (Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, the original title of the book, should give an idea of the neighborhood and her dialect), and she lives payday to increasingly distanced payday. It's 1957, and the post-war economic boom is starting to wear thin.

Even her wealthy and/or aristocratic clients, whose house she cleans on a regular basis, are complaining about having to watch their sizeable wallets and purses. There's a real telltale moment of Ada's engrained politeness when a noblewoman, whose daughter is about to marry, notes that she had to sell an expensive painting to help with the costs. Ada, obviously, notices all of the other valuable paintings and accoutrements in the home, and while we can see a glimpse of skepticism about the rich woman's alleged financial troubles, that's nothing she'd ever vocalize. When the noblewoman decides to cut back on Ada's hours instead of just paying what she owes her cleaner, we also catch a glimpse of the limits and perils of such social niceties.

Ada trying to learn those boundaries—between being kind and being walked upon by those who would take advantage of her personality and station—is the main arc for this character. Mostly, though, the story is just about that personality and some really good luck carrying Ada through some difficult times, toward a goal, and into the sphere of strangers who will quickly—or with a bit of effort—become friends and allies.

That same aristocratic woman has recently bought a dress from the House of Dior in Paris, and the mere sight of it, lying in wait on a chair, provides Ada with the goal of having such a gown of her own. With some encouragement from a pair of friends—fellow cleaner Vi (Ellen Thomas) and dog track employee Archie (Jason Isaacs)—and some windfalls of unexpected money, Ada books a flight for a single day in Paris, but upon arriving at Dior, she quickly learns that buying haute couture isn't as easy as picking something off the rack and paying at the counter.

That's the plot, and it's just enough. The real fun of the screenplay (written by Fabian, Carroll Cartwright, Keith Thompson, and Olivia Hetreed) is in the various and effortless ways Ada navigates the world of high culture (with the aid of cash to spend in a Paris that's dealing with inflation and a strike of garbage collectors) and disarms the defenses of so many people within this realm.

Among the charmed are André Fauvel (Lucas Bravo), Dior's head of finance who invites Ada to stay at his apartment while the dress is being made and sees her adventure as proof of a new business concept for the fashion house, and Natasha (Alba Baptista), the beautiful model who serves the face of Dior but has more intellectual ambitions for her life. There's also the Marquis de Chassagne (Lambert Wilson), a widower who invites Ada to be his guest at Dior and whose warmth toward her might mean romance is in the air. The closest the story comes to providing a villain is in Claudine Colbert (Isabelle Huppert), Dior's right hand, who sees Ada's desire for an expensive dress as an affront to fashion house's status, but even this stick in the mud has a softer side—beneath a thick layer of judgmental privilege—that Ada seems able to sense.

As Ada's goal gets closer to completion, she helps all of these characters through assorted fears, feelings of inferiority, and other things that the good-hearted woman can't bear to see. They learn from her and her dreams, and from their acceptance or push-back or unfortunately underlying motives, Ada learns a few things about both the kindness of strangers and how some people might never see her as more than poor, naïve, and/or subservient person. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris gives us a lovely, character-focused tale, and Manville carries it with grace, humor, and a sense of growing inner strength.

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