Deborah Ross

Pleasantly untaxing: Mrs Harris Goes to Paris reviewed

We know the ingredients and how the recipe will turn out – but it does star Lesley Manville, and the dresses are knockout

Frock and awe: Lesley Manville as Mrs Harris 
issue 01 October 2022

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.

If you are in the mood for something pleasantly untaxing you will be pleasantly untaxed

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).

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