Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris

Based on Paul Gallico’s novel, Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris follows 1950s cleaning lady Ada Harris (Lesley Manville) as she decides to shake up her humdrum life by purchasing an expensive Christian Dior gown. Filmmaker Anthony Fabian, working from a script written with Carroll Cartwright, Keith Thompson, and Olivia Hetreed, delivers a thoroughly agreeable endeavor that benefits from the superb efforts of Manville and her various costars, as the performers’ uniformly charismatic work goes a long way towards perpetuating the movie’s compulsively watchable atmosphere – with Manville herself turning in a completely captivating and sympathetic performance that effectively anchors the proceedings from start to finish. And although the picture is admittedly a little padded-out and overlong in certain stretches, Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris‘ midsection’s emphasis on affable, crowd-pleasing interludes goes a long way towards rendering such concerns moot – with the satisfying third act ensuring that the whole thing concludes on as positive and entertaining a note as one could’ve envisioned. The end result is a first-class piece of work that boasts plenty of attributes that are, quite frankly, impossible to dislike, and one can’t help but wish, ultimately, that the title character makes a return in future stories and escapades.

*** out of ****