‘Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris’ Is the Glorious Return of Mom Cinema
Pour a Nalgene full of Barefoot Pinot Grigio and fill a Ziploc bag with Smartfood because you’re about to receive a FaceTime call during work hours from your mom asking you to go to the movies… and maybe if you read that article she sent you? Mom Cinema is back, stomping its kitten-heeled way into theaters with Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, a splendid new entry in the canon out Friday.
For those who need a quick her-story lesson, “Mom Cinema,” a film genre I’d like to think I coined but was probably thought up by another, much smarter gay man in the 1990s (The Age of the Mom), has been lying dormant for too long. And even if you think you don’t know Mom Cinema, you’re probably already deeply familiar with it.
The genre has a few quintessential trademarks. Usually, these films will star an Esteemed Older Actress (“EOA,” if you will) playing a character who is at a standstill in life, for one reason or another. She’s usually recently divorced or recently widowed, and if she has kids at all, they’ve left the house. Stuck in a rut and looking for a new lease on life, inspiration strikes when EOA’s best friend, EOA #2, encourages her to get back out there to live her dreams, often in some sumptuous exotic locale.
Think Under the Tuscan Sun; Eat, Pray, Love; Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day; and throw in the Meryl Streep half of Julie & Julia for good measure.
But when was the last time you saw any Mom Cinema popping up at your local movie theater, or even on streaming? This feel-great fare has been shuffled to the bottom of studio script piles in recent years, their mid-budget magic being tossed aside in favor of more Marvel and relentless reboots. But you simply cannot keep a good girl down, and I’m thrilled to report that the genre is not just surviving, it’s thriving.
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, the latest offering from Focus Features (which is also producing Book Club 2, in which a slew of moms head off on vacation), is a pure delight, as sweet and delicate as a French dessert. Based on the 1958 novel of the same name, the film stars Lesley Manville as Ada Harris, a cleaning lady in post-war, late-1950s England whose husband went missing in action over a decade earlier, presumed dead by his battalion. She flits about her life with resigned heartache, taking care of the messes left behind by her wealthy clientele and occasionally cutting a bit loose at the local pub with her best friend and fellow cleaner, Vi (the lovely Ellen Thomas).
After one of her clients shows her a couture Dior dress, just purchased in France, Mrs. Harris becomes enamored with the beauty of the garment and its one-of-a-kind construction. She starts saving for one of her own, taking extra jobs and playing the lottery while looking for cosmic signs from her husband that she’s doing the right thing. When a knock on her door leads to a lump sum of her husband’s military pension in her pockets, Mrs. Harris can’t help but think that it’s a sign from above for a chance to finally get a little beauty back in her life.
But things don’t come so easily for Mrs. Harris once she arrives in the City of Light. Right off the plane, she’s headed directly for the House of Dior, on the morning of the presentation of his 10th couture collection. When she’s turned away by the curt head of the atelier, Claudine Colbert (the great Isabelle Huppert, in all of her fiery auburn-haired glory), Mrs. Harris demands to be treated as well as anyone else, catching the eye of the Marquis de Chasse (the always suave Lambert Wilson), who escorts her to come to see the show as his guest.
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Even so early on in the film, every little win for Mrs. Harris feels monumental, like seeing someone you admire get their due after watching them linger only in the shadows for years. That’s part of what this film does so well. It ingratiates itself to the viewer, whisks them away into its world, and before you realize it, you’re brimming ear to ear watching your close friend Mrs. Harris begin to live out her dreams.
Along the way, Mrs. Harris charms Dior’s Head of Accounts (Emily in Paris’ Lucas Bravo) and the face of the brand (Alba Baptista), who help her navigate Claudine’s undermining and introduce her to all of the whirlwind romance that Paris has to offer. Mrs. Harris’ ease in making new relationships might play like an all-too-simple plot device to some, but it’s a testament to how far the character’s values can take her.
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is a film about kindness and the things that we can do for each other as humans. It’s about how good deeds and being a gentle, compassionate person is a currency more valuable than money. As someone who white-knuckles their belief that kindness is paramount to success in every avenue of life, I felt the tip of Mrs. Harris’ flower-adorned cap—there is money left yet in simple stories about good things happening to good people.
But all of those sentiments would be nothing without an actress to sell them. From the very moment Lesley Manville appears in the film’s first frame, she exudes such a familiar, glowing warmth that she feels like your mother, sister, aunt, grandmother, and best friend all in one lovely character. Manville’s sensational performance glides the film through even in its silliest moments. When the script occasionally feels like it’s being held together by nothing but dressing pins and a prayer, it’s her who picks up the muslin and finishes the seams.
The rest of the cast vibes off of her energy, too. Isabelle Huppert, particularly, looks to be having some of the most fun of her career (second only, maybe, to her murderous turn in the campy 2019 thriller Greta). Lambert Wilson and Alba Baptista are equally enchanting as they gallivant around the city with Mrs. Harris, taking her from rose gardens to burlesque shows. And Lucas Bravo? If I had seen his round-frame glasses and swooping blond hair as a lovesick 15-year-old, I would’ve been toast. Not a night would’ve passed without me fantasizing about us ending up together, him whisking me away on his Vespa.
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is a perfectly baked, warm banana bread. An airy slice of angel food cake. The most divinely tart lemon bar. There is a scene where Lesley Manville is late to one of her fittings after too much champagne the night before and must dash through the rainy streets of Paris over crisp autumn leaves in her kitten heels to get to Dior. That is simply what cinema is all about! That's why the medium was created. James Cameron has been trying to proselytize us all to think that Avatar and its fifty sequels no one cares about are the future of cinema, but no blue alien is going to beat Lesley Manville, hair unkempt, late, and in a hat!
But it’s not all empty calories, either. When I say that this movie is the perfect balm to all of the world’s bitterness, I mean it. It wears its heart on its designer sleeve, making space for its viewers to remember what it’s like to dream. It’s Paddington meets Phantom Thread, the film we’ve always wanted but became too weary to wait for after Mom Cinema became a lost art. Moms always do show us their resilience when we least expect it.
Ada Harris believes in signs and signals. She carries such sincere, giddy faith that I, too, am inclined to start believing in little nods from the universe again. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris has the power to make even the most jaded people look at the world with a hopeful glint in their eyes. It’s pure, unfiltered mom cinema. But it’s so much more than that too. It’s a reminder of the way movies can make us feel, of how they can and should rearrange our entire states of being and spit us out of the multiplex dizzy with hope and joy, more aware of all of the marvelous beauty of the world. When was the last time you walked out of the movies and felt renewed? Take a vacation with Mrs. Harris and remember just how good a little optimism can feel on a summer afternoon.
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