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Mrs. Harris Goes to Parisis, despite its deceivingly simple premise, many things.
Harrismakes dressmaking an A-plot and treats gowns like members of its ensemble.
The storyisdresses, says writer-director Anthony Fabian.
Harris,dresses are pivots on which the action turns.
Thats a lot of weight to put on some tailored fabric.
Jenny always talks about clothes not as clothes but as a equipment to tell a story.
Its never purely about the aesthetic.
Its about,Is this telling the story in the best way that it can?
Arris Goes to Paris the ones called Ravissant, Venus, and Temptation.
Ravissant is the first Dior dress Mrs. Harris, who works as a cleaning woman, lays eyes on.
There is almost a kind of interaction between her and the dress.
And then Felix Wiedemann, our cameraman, played with what Jenny had given him with the light.
Its a reminder that the original meaning of the wordglamourwas a magic spell.
This visual establishes an openness toward the past and future that marks this movie as something special.
But what she does as an actress in that moment is suddenly lose about 20 years.
It was very, very important to get color into the palette of the show, Beavan says.
The whole point is that its got to be pieces Mrs. Harris thinks are wonderful.
And she certainly does.
Mrs. Harris gasps and swoons at each look that comes through the door.
Sometimes she mutters praise under her breath or breaks into small applause.
Fabian staged the scene to get that breathless performance out of Manville.
We did it in the sequence that youre pretty much seeing it in, he says.
The whole scene is a depiction of what it feels like to be totally enraptured by beauty.
It was very, very important that the show be seen through her eyes, says Fabian.
So everything in terms of the choice of camera angles was very much from Lesleys point of view.
Temptation is based on Diablotine, a red-sequined gown from Diors 1957 collection that Beavan adapted for Manvilles character.
If you have bright red, itll just look crass, she says.
Temptation had to look appropriate for an older protagonist but still alluring enough to be the films glamorous apex.
But the dress that sees the most action by far inMrs.
This is a costume with its own three-act character arc.
singed to a raggedy crisp.
John Bright made that dress, says Beavan.
She loved the whole tableau of that scene.
It was dramatically necessary, Im afraid, says Fabian.
In fact, Paul Gallico has a terrible tendency to rescue his characters too soon.
The answer, naturally, was to set the dress aflame.
This is a devastating moment not only for Mrs. Harris but, I realized, also for Beavan.
she says when I bring it up.
I blame that entirely on the screenwriters various for landing me in that.
And thank goodness for visual effects because I think inCruellawe did it very well.
But no, I have no idea.
Im sure were burning things at the moment inMad Max.
Flames and destruction aside, Beavan thinksMrs.
Harris Goes to Pariscouldnt be timelier or more essential.
