Mrs Harris Goes to Paris (2022)

September 19, 2022 6:46 AM

A widowed cleaning lady in 1950s London falls madly in love with a couture Dior dress, and decides that she must have one of her own.

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris review – Lesley Manville charms in light soufflé [Guardian]

posted by ellieBOA (7 comments total)

I hope someone who has seen the film posts a comment, because I read the book a very long time ago. It was charming, but somewhat realistic, about the difficulties and consequences of pursuing a very singular goal.
Glad to hear Lesley Manville is getting recognition.
posted by winesong at 5:23 PM on September 19, 2022

It was a charming but realistic film, I haven’t read the book but that seems true to it. It was a bit twee in parts but I really liked it overall and Lesley Manville was fantastic as always, as were the rest of the main cast!
posted by ellieBOA at 12:56 AM on September 20, 2022

It's indeed charming, not sure about the realism though (London charwoman walks in a Dior show and steals hearts)... Definitely a feelgood movie, with no true villains (except the wife of the "garbage king" but she's a minor character). Lucas Bravo apparently escaped from Emily in Paris and went back in time. Amusingly, the subplot about modernizing Dior echoes that of the Netflix show, who in its first season also has a aging grand couturier struggling with competition. In real life, Dior had started licensing the brand in 1950... and died in 1957, the year when the movie takes place, but either the movie is set in an alternate reality or his death is not reported. It's not completely off though: the Lucas Bravo character seems inspired by the real life Jacques Rouët, Dior's business manager, and the Huppert one seems to be a variation on Suzanne Luling, Dior's childhood friend and his head of sales. I was also puzzled by the garbage strikes, which did happen in 1947 (and later in the 1960s) but the employees were municipal workers and public sanitation was not (yet) privatized, so the "garbage king" stuff is not very period-appropriate. None of this matters of course, it's a cute movie.
posted by elgilito at 2:57 AM on September 21, 2022

How Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris Captured the Feeling of Love at First Sight (With a Dress) [Vulture / Archive]
posted by ellieBOA at 9:59 AM on September 21, 2022

Realistic in the sense of her facing all those obstacles more than factual!
posted by ellieBOA at 9:59 AM on September 21, 2022

I still don't know how the young actress was able to put on a dress fitted precisely to Lesley Manville. Dior must have been in the superhero costume business, like the fashion guy in the latest episode of She-Hulk.
posted by elgilito at 1:59 AM on September 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

I still don't know how the young actress was able to put on a dress fitted precisely to Lesley Manville.

That one had me rolling my eyes. That actress was taller and larger than Lesley Manville, and with a significantly larger chest. She would never have been able to get into that dress. Wardrobe would have had to make a second dress for her.

Lesley Manville would have been 65/66 when this movie was made. The movie was supposedly set in 1957, which meant her husband's 1944 death would have taken place 13 years before. Unless she was significantly older than him, her husband would have been too old to serve in World War II. This was really a role for an actress in her early fifties. Lesley Manville was wonderful, and I guess the idea is we're all supposed to ignore the age thing, but I couldn't.

Also, while I enjoyed the fashion show nearly as much as Ada, the very first outfit in the fashion show was Dior's iconic New Look, which came out in 1947.

This movie was very charming, but the numerous unrealistic aspects of it were so jarring.
posted by orange swan at 8:50 AM on August 20, 2023