Neither hambone nor underplayer, Lesley Manville gives tremendous value for the money. Her classical chops, coupled with a shrewd improviser’s wiles honed in the films of Mike Leigh, have elevated so many projects, among them Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread,” in which Manville played the impeccably coifed gatekeeper to Daniel Day-Lewis’s meticulous Pygmalion fantasies of what the well-dressed woman should wear.
“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” allows Manville to be the one outside of the haute couture, looking in, and then striding right through the looking glass. This is the latest screen adaptation of the 1958 Paul Gallico novel, about a humble London war widow getting by as a charwoman (though I don’t believe the new film calls her that). Ada Harris dreams of luxury, for once, before it’s too late. Her story is a daydream made real, about traveling to the home of the House of Dior and coming home with something nice.
Manville and her fellow actors ensure that the film certainly is that. Its niceness is all, even when director and co-writer Anthony Fabian foists a vaguely bullying charm onto the storytelling. The adaptation stays pretty faithful to Gallico’s original, though Harris herself has evolved in different directions.
No longer is she the sort of postwar British specimen who’d say something like “dirty, them foreigners,” the way Angela Lansbury put it in the 1992 TV movie. This time, her corner of mid-1950s London is progressive enough for a wider, less paranoid vision of this woman’s world, before and after she goes to Paris.
The inciting plot incident remains the same. When Harris spies one of her regular cleaning clients’ Dior dress, the sight takes her breath away. Her life immediately transforms into a single, pricey long shot: Saving enough money to fund a quick flight to Paris, where she will buy a single Dior dress and return home in a dreamy Cinderella state of mind.
The lives she transforms en route, by way of compassion and beguiling effrontery, are many and grateful. Initially the formidable Mme. Colbert (Isabelle Huppert, who really is a hambone here) sees this working-class interloper in the House of Dior as a pest to be waved away. But Harris persists, aided by the discreetly dashing assistance of a wealthy nobleman and Dior regular (Lambert Wilson). She wants that dress!
“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” tick-tocks between setback and advance, dashed hopes and fortuitous kindnesses. Primarily, our hero, a warm, earthbound Mary Poppins, plays matchmaker to a restless Dior model (Alba Baptista) and a shy Dior accountant (Lucas Bravo). The idea with the new “Mrs. Harris” is to make her more of an engine and less of a passenger in her own story. The screenwriters (four in all) yield mixed results, as Harris foments a workers’ strike, among other late-breaking developments.
Manville in interviews has described the material as “a musical without the music,” though “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” has, in fact, already been turned into a British musical. If director Fabian’s touch is a little heavy and coy, the actors lighten it every preordained step of the way. A lot of folks will enjoy the wish-fulfillment. We need it: Not a lot in the real world right now is fully cooperating in that regard.
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'MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS'
2.5 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: PG (for language, suggestive material and smoking)
Running time: 1:55
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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