Picoreview: Mrs Harris Goes to Paris – a delight!
I very much wanted to see this in the theatre and for whatever reason failed to, so when I had the TV to myself and discovered it on Netflix a couple nights ago, for once in my life I didn’t spend 45 minutes trying to decide what to watch and finally decide to watch nothing, but just watched it. :)
It really is a delight. Charming, sweet, soft, occasionally heartbreaking, and funny. The lead, Lesley Manville, is one of those actors I feel like I’ve always been aware of even though looking at her filmography doesn’t seem to show much that I’ve actually seen. She’s absolutely lovely in the role, and I completely accepted her as a heartbroken widow who falls in love with a Dior gown. She was just lovely.
They did some WONDERFUL stuff with the lighting that just absolutely thrilled me, and the dresses were, of course, beautiful to the point that more than once I, who am familiar with 1950s Dior because look, we all are, on a subconscious level if nothing else, was gasping out loud as the models displayed them. They were so, so beautiful. All of the costuming in the film was, as you might imagine, excellent, and it’s worth watching for that alone. (Apparently all of Manville’s clothes were vintage except her coat and her Dior, which they made. That’s pretty cool.)
The supporting cast is all both well-written and well-cast; even the small roles (including what amount to a trio of drunken fairy godfathers) have a lot of personality and presence to them. And having watched this now instead of when it came out meant there were several people in it that I went “Oh hey look it’s them!” instead of “um, who is that?” Most particularly Alba Baptista (Warrior Nun and even more recently, Chris Evans’ wife, the lucky woman), who plays the lead Dior model while channeling a lot of Audrey Hepburn, and Anna Chancellor (probably best known as Henrietta “Duckface” from Four Weddings & a Funeral, but who I JUST saw in My Lady Jane so she was newly re-familiar to me), and also the vaguely familiar handsome guy interested in Alba Baptista’s character, who turned out to be Julia Roberts’ boyfriend in Ticket to Paradise. :) So it was a bit of spot-the-actor, but not in a distracting way.
Jason Isaacs also plays a slightly roguish Irishman with a convincing enough accent that I actually looked him up to make sure he wasn’t Irish. He’s not. I didn’t think he was. But it was a good accent!
I’m very happy to have finally seen it, and could see this one going on my comfort rewatch list, which is quite an achievement for any film. :)