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.