Mrs Harris Goes To Paris review – A feel-good French affair

The two roles, and the films, could not be more different. In Paul Thomas Anderson’s arty drama, she was a fashion house’s icy matriarch, but here she is a cheerful cockney cleaner in a feel-good Brit flick.

The plot, taken from Paul Gallico’s 1958 novel Mrs ’Arris Goes to Paris, is wildly, and knowingly, unlikely. Ada Harris (Manville) is a widow cheerily toiling away in the posher neighbourhoods of 1957 London.

While cleaning for a well-heeled client (a haughty Anna Chancellor), she falls suddenly, madly and deeply in love. The object of her affection is a sparkly French dress she spots draped over a chair.

Now, Ada has a purpose. She must have a dress of her own even though it cost £500, which, accounting for inflation and the plunging pound, is probably the modern equivalent of several million.

But fate intervenes with a flurry of happy coincidences. News of a backdated war widow’s pension, a pools win, and a reward for finding a lost necklace send the determined cleaner to the French capital.

“Where’s the frocks?” she chirps after another lucky break allows her to breeze past the gatekeepers at Dior’s salon.

Isabelle Huppert’s manager looks like she has just swallowed a needle until Ada opens a handbag stuffed with banknotes.

The esteemed fashion house is in trouble and, after booking her first dress fitting, Ada charms its accountant (Lucas Bravo) and top model (Alba Baptista), then begins to tidy up the firm’s finances.

From here, we are transported to a glamorous fantasy where good things happen to good people and decency and common sense ultimately triumph over prejudice and cruelty.

Manville’s plucky heroine feels tailor-made for the grim back end of 2022.

Mrs Harris Goes To Paris is in cinemas now (certificate PG).