Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

This adaptation of the much-loved 1958 novel by Paul Gallico, the American novelist and screenwriter behind The Snow Goose, The Pride of the Yankees, and The Poseidon Adventure, is a welcome throwback to the type of UK import that use to fill arthouse cinemas in the '90s. While some of those quaint Brit-flicks were terrible and some were wonderful, all are now missed. This one stars the radiant Lesley Manville, a veteran of many Mike Leigh pictures who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2017 for her performance in PT Anderson’s Phantom Thread. Manville plays the titular sixty-something, widowed London charwoman obsessed with Christian Dior haute couture, who dreams of travelling to Paris to buy her own Dior gown. Through a series of fortunate events, she's able to fulfil that dream. Once in the City of Light, she lives out an abbreviated fairytale adventure complete with the type of ups and downs, heroes and villains, chance meetings and small events that profoundly alter history, which only happens in movies Though the script is somewhat underdeveloped, and Paris only seems to be populated by about half a dozen people, the film, like its star is utterly charming.