Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris review – Lesley Manville will charm your socks off

Lesley Manville is the reason to see this tea cosy-like tale set in a caricatured version of 1950s Paris, the third adaptation of the novel of the same name by Paul Gallico, about a plucky, working class housekeeper from London whose dream is to own a Dior dress. It's a film that offers the same sense of short-term joy you might feel perusing a box of ornate chocolates, with Manville's frequently funny and committed turn making up for the fluffy nature of the material.

With its incessant, sentimental score and warm, fuzzy cinematography, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris has clearly set about emulating the wholesome vibes that proved crucial to the success of the Paddington movies, giving us a nostalgic, Blitz spirit-like view of Britain that in the current climate feels about as fantastical a place as Oz: indeed, director Anthony Fabian's approach appears to have been to create something that would play well alongside Paddington and its sequel on Christmas Day.

Manville – always impressive, and here channeling a bit of Angela Lansbury, no stranger to this role herself – is relentlessly charming as the earnest cleaner, a kind of human Paddington bear armed with an undefeatable optimism and phrases like “Gordon Bennett!” She's still mourning her husband's death in the aftermath of World War II, but a series of lucky breaks takes her from smoky London to vibrant Paris, where her attempts to buy a dress are made endlessly difficult by the presence of dismissive Dior director Claudine Colbert (Isabella Huppert, who seems uncharacteristically lost and miscast). In the film's biggest flight of fancy, Mrs. Harris winds up helping to save Dior from financial ruin, because why not?

It all makes for fun, featherlight viewing, though the plot – which really amounts to little more than “woman goes to France to purchase a dress” – eventually feels stretched out over an overlong two-hour runtime, with way too much time spent early on explaining how Mrs. Harris finds the money to fund her trip and buy the £500 dress in the first place. But despite the easy stereotypes (the script could have been written on a baguette) and predictable turns, it's a hard film to outright resist, while Jason Isaacs is great in a small, supporting role as Mrs. Harris' long-term admirer Archie. “Oh, that’s lovely,” says Mrs. Harris, catching sight of a beautiful gown during a fashion show at the House of Dior – though she could just as well have been talking about the movie.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is released in UK cinemas on 30 September.