Rent Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022)

A Gentle & Delightful Comedy - Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris review by GI

A light comedy of manners with a clash of cultures theme that has a warmth and gentleness making for a quite lovely film. Starring Lesley Manville, another British treasure and superb actress, who gives the titular role just the right touches throughout the entire film. Set in the late 1950s and Mrs Harris is a war widow who makes her living as a cleaner for hire. She dreams of one day owning a Christian Dior dress to wear to the local hop and she diligently saves her money where she can sometimes with a surprise small football pools win and sometimes losing on a silly bet at the greyhound racing. Eventually she scrapes together enough and heads off to Paris where she is a fish out of water. The script is gentle enough not to try and wring every joke out of the language barriers or the cultural shocks between the French and English that Mrs Harris encounters. The film is more concerned with showing how Mrs Harris' natural warmth, innocence and kindness wins people over even though she can be roused to action if the situation demands. Her main adversary in the story is Claudine (Isabelle Huppert), the Dior manager who sees her as a threat to their rich clients but even this tetchy relationship is not the focus of the narrative which remains one about kindness and humanity. This is just a pleasant almost Disneyesque film that leaves you smiling at the end and it's worth an evenings viewing.

An absolute gem! - Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris review by Champ

This is simply one of the loveliest, happiest, most uplifting films I have seen in a very long time. I loved it so much I watched it a second time a couple of days later, this time with my mum (who is in her 80s), as I knew she'd love it too (and I was right, she did). I cry quite easily at films, but this one was definitely a three tissue movie! But they were happy tears, not sad.

Lesley Manville is in almost every scene, and completely carries the film. She really should have won some awards for this performance. But the rest of the cast are uniformly excellent.

Not as good as I thought it would be - Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris review by CS

Was really excited when this movie was released, looked right up my street but was disappointed.

Found it a bit hum drum although story line plodded on quite well. It was well acted and some lovely

1950's costumes seen at Dior fashion show. Nothing to get excited about.