Anthony Fabian’s delightful film is the latest adaptation of the 1958 Paul Gallico novel “Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris“, which is for all intents and purposes a modern day fairy tale of a 1950s London housekeeper who one day sees a haute couture Christian Dior, and then has dreams of going to Paris to buy her own. This period piece has it all – romance, comedy, drama, and even political subtext – all woven into the fabric of the film as finely and expertly as a handmade Dior gown.
It’s hardly just a moralistic story or a movie about social inequality, classist prejudice and clashing life philosophies (though it is about those things too). It is an absolutely charming and wholesome Paddington-style fish-out-of-water story. Fashion is the subject matter and while there are much deeper themes, this is legitimately one of the great fashion films: the stunning fashion show montage (with each dress a replica of a real mid-century Dior dress) is basically the most effective Dior commercial ever made.
The film’s thesis seems to be that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who build others up, and those who tear others down. Mrs. Harris draws this distinction clearly, and then makes a pretty persuasive argument that you should be a good person. On the one hand you have the villains of the story – those who are often wealthy and look down on the proletariat whose backs they are trampling on. They can’t stand the idea that they have to rub shoulders with the likes of Mrs. Harris, and are furious that she has the nerve to even enter the House of Dior and wants to buy a “frock” of her own. These are the same people that have so much but still take from others – one of the motifs is how they often don’t even end up paying their bills, in Trumpist fashion. They think that the world owes them everything, to be waited on hand and foot.
On the other hand, Mrs. Harris scrimps and saves for every penny that she has. In the end, as she points out, “my money’s just as good as theirs.” She’s also helped immensely along the way by a few others who are kind, warm, and welcoming. These are mostly, but not all, the less well-off folks: vagabonds here and there, overworked seamstresses, and even a dashing young accountant and a conflicted model, who are a pair of the sweetest characters (played by Lucas Bravo and Alba Baptista, both of whom you can’t help but falling in love with). The showdown between Lesley Manville (as Mrs. Harris, and one of our finest working actresses today) and Isabelle Huppert’s Mrs. Colbert is just as good as you’d think – the only way it could have been better was if she went up against her doppleganger Cyril Woodcock.
It is such a joy watching this film, which is filled with a kind of dreamy giddiness and is a real pick me up if you are ever looking to cheer yourself up. Watching this is almost as good a time as Mrs. Harris is haivng herself in Paris. Nevertheless, the film doesn’t lose its credibility. It’s not so idealized as to brush away the challenges and the bad people that you inevitably run into in life, but it’s just hopeful enough that you’ll overcome them.
The movie has calibrated just the right dosage of realism (see the ending for a perfect example of this), and just wants you to believe that, by the end, that good things will eventually happen to good people who have worked hard to deserve it. It’s been a long time since I’ve rooted this earnestly for someone to succeed as I have for Mrs. Harris, and I’m rooting equally hard for this movie to keep getting more attention. As Mrs. Harris reminds us, “We need our dreams. Now more than ever.”
