Mrs Harris Goes To Paris (PG)
Ada Harris is a Cockney cleaning woman in 1950s London whose life is slowly slipping away down the drainpipe. There’s not much joy in the war widow’s life although she does enjoy a few after-work beers with her fellow cleaner Vi Butterfield (Ellen Thomas). Not all of her employers are great with Ada’s payments, though. Lady Dant (Anna Chancellor) is a mean-spirited upstart who has weekly losses of memory about where Ada’s pay might be lurking.
One day after Lady Dant has dashed out of her fashionable house Ada leaving Ada penniless in the bedroom, the cleaning lady makes a great discovery. She opens her tight employer’s well-stocked wardrobe and gazes in amazement at an ultra-fashionable Dior gown. Ada holds it up in front of her and falls in love with the beautiful garment. She determines, from that moment, that she, too, will own a Dior dress.
But to pay for it is the dilemma. Ada needs £500 plus travel money and maybe accommodation costs. She turns to Vi and the West Indian friend has plenty of ideas. They play the soccer pools and one Saturday night they listen in as the Division 1 results are read out on the BBC radio service. Ada and Vi win a handy sum, but they’re still a bit short of what is needed for the Paris trip. Off they go to White City and the greyhound racing and although they bet on one dog which breaks down mid-race they fall in with a man who gives them some extremely handy tips.
He’s bookie Archie (Jason Isaacs).
Armed now with her money swag, all in banknotes, off goes Ada for her very first trip to Paris.
After the sightseeing – the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame cathedral – she heads to the house of Dior. Getting in will be the hard part. Frosty front-of-house gatekeeper Claudine Colbert (Isabelle Huppert) sees straightaway the London lady does not look like one of her regular patrons. She’s on the verge of denying Ada entry before a prized client, the Marquis de Chassagne (Lambert Wilson), comes to Ada’s rescue. He offers her his arm, in they go and when Ada compliments the Marquis on the exquisite pink rose in his buttonhole he offers it to her.
One thing leads to another and eventually Ada is ushered into the fitting room. Here she meets Dior’s chief accountant Andre (Lucas Bravo) and his girlfriend, head model Natasha (Alba Baptista). The measurement taking and the fittings progress well and Ada even catches a glimpse of Monsieur Christian Dior.
“He looks just like my milkman,” she whispers to Andre. The accountant offers her his spare room in the Paris apartment where he lives. Extras clothing is no problem as Andre’s sister is away on holidays so Ada squeezes into the spare dresses.
Eventually her dress is finished and she heads back to London with the carefully wrapped and boxed prize garment. It’s a sort of feel-good movie made even more so when Ada’s carefully unwrapped Dior dress from Paris gets burnt in front of a heater by a family member.
Ada had loaned the dress to the family member to wear to a special formal function and the blaze – plus burnt gown – is pictured on the front page of one of London’s tabloid newspapers.
Seeing the devastation caused to one of their prized dresses the Paris staff at Dior dig out Mrs Harris’ measurements and send her a brand new gown.
It’s a great ending to a quite exciting adventure for the Cockney lady and left us all with a warm buzz as we departed the cinema.
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