First Take: Mrs Harris Goes to Paris - haute couture meets post-Covid cinema

SYNOPSIS: 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.

In any other year, this film would have gone to the arthouse circuit - but given the current release schedule, fair play to Universal for putting this film out on a wide release, as the THIRD adaptation of the 1958 Mrs Harris book has promise, but ultimately doesn’t quite land with cinemagoers as well as the trailers did.

It has a certain old school charm about it, as director Anthony Fabian (who co-wrote the script with Carroll Cartwright, Keith Thompson and Olivia Hetreed) really does go all in on the 1950s imagery - but sadly the pacing does let the film down a lot. 1 hour 55 minutes to adapt a 157 page book barely leaves enough room to breathe at times, especially with the quality of some of the dialogue, but on the bright side, it is a visually stunning film thanks to Felix Wiedemann’s cinematography, and the score from Rael Jones is a Ronseal job: it does what it says on the tin.

On the performances, Lesley Manville makes that role her own, ultimately making what should’ve been a TV movie feel more at home on the big screen- she has quite rightly been the focus of the PR for this one, and it’s worked well with the audiences this film will undoubtedly attract. The rest of the starpower includes Isabelle Huppert, Alba Baptista, Lambert Wilson, Lucas Bravo, and rounding out that supporting cast, well, there’s only one way I can say this as a member of the church: hello to Jason Isaacs. It’s a film that has a lot of heart, but ultimately it won’t last long in cinemas; as I type this the local place I go to has dropped it from the schedule after just a week out and £800,000 at the UK box office.

THE VERDICT

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris has a lot of potential, but ultimately at a 1 hour 55 minute runtime, just feels a bit too long for its own good- but the performances just about make up for the pacing. It’s a film that will attract the older audiences back to the big screen though, and that’s all that matters really.

RATING: 3/5