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Imagine, if you can, the Paddington films without the bear. This will give you a good idea of what to expect from Leslie Manville’s new movie Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. Manville’s Ada Harris has the same unfailingly positive expectations of every person she meets as well as a similar kind of knowing unworldliness, the story is told with equally limited drama but just as much of the incredible charm. It also has the same nostalgic and unchallenging notions of our national identity.

Additionally, this isn’t quite a kid’s film or an adult drama but has the same easy appeal to every age. Whereas Paddington and its sequel felt like children’s movies reaching out to grown ups, this is probably the other way around but everyone will be able to enjoy the simple characterisation and gentle plot here just as they did there.

In fact watching this has made me rethink the Paddington movies a bit. With this I was very aware that the narrative was predictable, unchallenging and loaded with a fair amount of contrivance and I couldn’t initially get past the fairly one note characterisation, but having made the comparison with the Paddingtons in my mind I realised the same was true of those films. They had a delightful likability that excused these issues though and just because this isn’t adapted from a series of books aimed at under tens (although the title might suggest otherwise) there is no reason not to extend it the same indulgence.

The Paddington films’ rose tinted, sweet view of Britishness and its use of quaint London locations is also a part of this movie but here (as the title firmly indicates) this sensibility is extended across The Channel as well. Sure the French characters fall in with almost every cliche imaginable (no striped shirts and onions but that’s where they draw the line) but they are affectionately created and inoffensively drawn and certainly no more exaggerated than the English people we see on screen, so once again we can forgive it.

The one area that this arguably departs from the Paddington formula is in how the movie has a strong element of tragedy lying just beneath the frivolity. Mrs. Harris is a put upon cleaner in post war Britain whose husband never returned from the fight in Europe. Having finally received the news that he has died and with all hope for a return to what made her truly happy having been lost, she comes into some money. Rather than using this to properly turn things around she decides that the one thing that will offer her some small release from her current existence, the one thing that will make her feel that she is more than what everyone thinks she is, is to own a Dior gown. So it is that she heads to the French Capital with the rolls of cash that could actually stand to improve her condition long term, to blow it all on a frock. It is a beautiful dream but it is a shallow one that smacks of some delusion. This isn’t really writ large in the story until a brief period toward the end when it does suddenly come to the fore. Paddington may have had his issues with being an immigrant but it never defined him in the way Ada Harris’ struggles with her challenges do. That cute little cub’s journey across the sea offers him salvation, Mrs. Harris’ is never more than a break from her sadness and you always know she will have to go home at some point. Of course by the end she has got different benefits from her trip than those she intended but there is a version of this tale that could actually end on a real downer.

Interestingly, the idea that joy can be found in a pretty dress is one that the film seems to rely on itself. The protagonist of this movie is distracted by the work of the famous Gallic fashion house and in truth so are the audience. If it is the promise of Parisian haute couture that brings you to the film then you will not be disappointed. Where Paddington’s romantic fixation was with marmalade, here it is with bodices, skirts, sleeves, hemlines, necklines, straps and wraps and the clothes on display are items of real beauty.

Even if this isn’t your (clutch) bag though there is so much here to enjoy. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is not groundbreaking cinema, it will not surprise and it won’t be starting debate or artistic revolution. It has an old fashioned appeal though and just like with everyone’s favourite Ursus arctos Linnaeus, there is something wrong with you if don’t love it. Whether the film makers have deliberately leant on those two delightful bear films or not, travelling from Paddington used to be the best route to Paris and it turns perhaps out it still is.

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The Ripley Factor:

There is something about Mrs. Harris’ stoicism that feels very female and although it is the stereotype, commonly attributable to WWII widows. It is this, alongside her drive, kindness and ambition for others that makes her a genuinely inspiring character, more I would say that Michael Bond’s famous creation. It is her nature and her gender that gives her strength. Also, there are lots of women like her out there in the real world, which can’t be said of talking bears.