Mrs Harris Goes to Paris (2002) is a modern mastering of the fairytale genre, its older lead bringing new life to the underdog. Wrapped in a Dior box, it reminds me to have hope in the world.
Lesley Manville’s 2022 adaption of Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, coming from the 1958 novel of the same name, is a romantic fantasy at its core, a modern-day fairytale. Instead of a stable boy though, we follow a heroine, an elderly English cleaner, as she goes on a journey to Paris not to find herself a prince, but the perfect Dior dress.
Mrs Harris is someone who has left her best years behind her according to society and is at an age where starting over seems impossible. Unlike other fairytale heroes, she doesn’t have the privilege of being naive. After all, she has breathed in the world’s challenges as a working class woman for decades. The only thing that makes her special is her endless love for the world.
Every one of us has a Mrs Harris in our lives. The eternally doting, hard-working, compassionate figure who acts as a blanket to anyone who enters their circle. Your real life fairy godmother. They might be your friend, your former teacher or the woman who once listened to your woes on a park bench, it doesn’t matter. The beauty of the character is her ability to shift into this person.
For me, Mrs Harris is my Granny, a woman of great kindness with an endless appetite for stories. I watch on the screen as Mrs Harris talks in her humble, broad, voice and I see my grandmother taking what she wants, and telling me to do the same. Through redefining the fairytale hero as an older woman, the movie has given new meaning to the kind nature she shows throughout. She is not simply an embodiment of good nature, but someone who makes the active choice to help others at her own peril.
Mrs Harris was not a character that I got to meet in my childhood. Instead, I found her when I was sixteen, desperately trying to find my place in the world while going through the throes of teenage angst. It’s ironic to think that people would look at me and see an underdog before they saw it in her.
Even in Dior, her fantastical world of fashion, she just can’t get what she wants. She is put down as a nobody time and time again and the dress she orders, the realisation of her dream, is taken away from her. Her only saviour is Natasha, a young model, and a more traditional underdog.The framing of Natasha as an equal to Mrs Harris is part of what makes the film so revolutionary in its representation of age for me. It tells us that dreams are not something reserved for the young, and that every story is equal and worth telling.
It is this that makes the movie a masterclass in the telling of the underdog story, arguably being the best seen in many years. In a world where critics encourage the media to be as dark as reality, Mrs Harris encourages optimism for all. She rejects the way that both her and the rest of the aged working class are traditionally viewed, finally getting her fairytale ending after leading a strike against the society that undervalues her work. Returning to England with her dress, though not the one she wanted, she knows that she has made her husband proud.
Once again, she is told that she is a nobody, since she has no proof that her wish came true. Her clients, representing the same society that roots for underdogs, tell her that she isn’t someone who is deserving of a happy ending. It is a depressing arc for a feel-good movie but at the same time, I think it’s vitally important to understand how age plays into Mrs Harris’ role as an underdog in the fairytale world.
Her fairytale ending comes not from a stroke of luck, like many other heroes, but as acknowledgement for her caring for others. When she most needs it, she is gifted the dress that she initially chose from the workers of Dior, the real life underdogs that she raised up through the strike. They acknowledged her for recognising their worth, and her journey comes to a close as she cuts herself off from her selfish clients.
She did not get a title or a new life, but simply a dress to go to the local club in. The movie ends with her coming down the stairs of the club in the dress, a Cinderella daydream. Everything goes on for her as normal, unlike other characters in the genre who are rewarded with status by their society. Her wearing the dress and getting to be beautiful is a simple message of how our good deeds are recognised.
This is likely why the movie is such a comfort for me, as it is for so many others. The movie recognises the plights of people that only we seem to recognise. When Mrs Harris gets confirmation at the beginning of the film that her happily ever after, her husband Eddie, has died, it is not her ending. Instead, it is the commencement of her journey to find herself. Our lives are not as simple as having a singular happily ever after.
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris tells us that not all is hopeless. Our love for the world will be rewarded if we recognise ourselves as deserving of it and fight for it, no matter who we are. This movie is the fairytale that we all need to be told, and I implore you to go and watch it if you ever feel invisible in this world.
Words by Elise Gavin
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