Mrs Harris goes to Paris - did you see it?

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Ada Harris is an English war widow approaching middle age and reliant on the little income she raises from cleaning other people’s houses. She’s content with her lot but grieves for her husband who is missing presumed dead after his plane disappeared over Poland. In one of the big houses that she cleans she comes across a dress made by Dior, and although the lady of the house pleads hard times and never gets round to paying Ada for her work, she was able to afford a dress made especially for her by Dior costing, in 1954, £500. Ada is captivated by the dress and sets her naive little heart on saving up to go to Paris to buy one, which she does. The dowdy, naive, inexperienced little mouse of a cleaning lady unwittingly charms Paris, and after many setbacks in life ends up getting the dress, but not without a lot of sadness and twists of fate. A delight of a film, silly and fanciful in many ways, but with a deep sadness running through it. Lesley Manville plays Ada with restraint and humility and none of the other characters can hold a candle to her. Ada brings kindness into the brash, cutthroat world of Parisian haute couture. Kindness, generosity and a sense of fairness are pitted against rapacious capitalism and show it for the dehumanising force that it is. Ada Harris eventually gets more than she wished for while the devotees of the mighty dollar, franc and yen are taken down a peg or two. It’s a film that wouldn’t look out of place among the parables of Jesus.