Let’s look at two – very different – literary adaptations this week.

What an unexpected delight! Touted as “House of Gucci” for nice people, “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” follows the adventures of effervescent Ada Harris (Lesley Manville), a widowed British housekeeper who dreams of buying her own Christian Dior gown.

In the years after W.W.II, plucky Mrs. Harris barely makes a living cleaning people’s houses and hanging out with her best friend/neighbor (Ellen Thomas) and a roguish bookmaker (Jason Isaac). So when good luck finally shines on her, delivering a windfall of cash, she sets off for Avenue Montaigne in Paris.

In 1957, Christian Dior, who launched his haute couture line in 1947, was celebrating his 10^th anniversary collection, featuring sumptuous, wasp-waisted, full-skirted dresses. On arriving at Dior’s atelier, Mrs. Harris instinctively helps Natasha (Alba Baptista), a model who trips and falls, retrieving her handbag and earning her gratitude.

Then when dowdy-looking Mrs. Harris is abruptly dismissed by Dior’s imperious vendeuse Madame Colbert (Isabelle Huppert), she’s ‘rescued’ by a charming widower, Marquis de Chassange (Lambert Wilson), who invites her to attend the runway show as his guest. 

Viewing one exquisite frock after another, Mrs. Harris falls in love – with a glamorous gown she cannot have. So she chooses another and – after being offered lodging in Montmartre by Dior’s shy accountant Andre Fauvel (Lucas Bravo) – duly reports for daily fittings while befriending the hard-working seamstresses and openly campaigning for workplace justice.

Paul Gallico’s 1958 best-seller was previously made into a forgettable 1992 TV movie, starring Angela Lansbury and Diana Rigg. But this version of Gallico’s feel-good fantasy, adapted by Carroll Cartwright, Olivia Hetreed, Keith Thompson and director Anthony Fabian, is a confectionary delight, a fashionable feast for the eyes.

While the House of Dior lent five opulent outfits from its heritage collection, three-time Oscar-winning designer Jenny Beavan and her costume-makers John Bright and Jane Law, dutifully recreated the vintage Dior look. 

FYI: If Lesley Manville looks familiar, perhaps you remember her Oscar-nominated performance as cynical Cyril in 2017’s “Phantom Thread.” Manville’s next role is Princess Margaret in “The Crown.”

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” is an elegant, endearing, escapist 8, playing in theaters.

Before becoming a New York Times best-selling novelist, Delia Owens was a zoologist, having written three non-fiction books with her former husband, Mark Owens.

Her “Where the Crawdads Sing” is about loneliness, isolation, prejudice and the forces of nature – concepts that are, admittedly, elusive to express cinematically. 

Abandoned by her mother, young Catherine Danielle Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones) – a.k.a. Kya – watched helplessly as each of her older siblings ran away from their abusive/alcoholic father who, when he died, left vulnerable Kya alone and penniless near Barkley Cove in the North Carolina marshland.

Intuitively smart and infinitely resourceful, she manages to survive on her own, consoled and protected  by kindly Black shopkeepers Jumpin’ (Sterling Macer Jr.) and Mabel (Michael Hyatt), who buy the fresh mussels she digs up before dawn. 

Fascinated by the wetlands wildlife around her, Kya collects and catalogues feathers and shells, drawing intricate depictions of the birds, bugs and plants. Derisively dubbed ‘marsh girl’ and shunned at school, she can neither read nor write until gentle Tate (Taylor John Smith) teaches her these basic skills. 

As Kya and Tate grow up, they’re naturally attracted to one another. But he’s determined to study biology at Chapel Hill, leaving Kya heartbroken but inspired to turn her naturalist drawings into a book.

In Tate’s absence, shy, reclusive Kya is clandestinely courted by Chase (Harris Dickinson), who humiliates her with his duplicity. So when Chase is found dead, Kya is accused of murder. But as her lawyer (David Strathairn) proves in court, she has the perfect alibi: when Chase died, she was out-of-town, meeting with her publisher.

It’s a courtroom drama / murder mystery / coming-of-age saga / romance. Unfortunately, as adapted by Luci Alibar, directed by Olivia Newman, photographed by Polly Morgan and produced by Reese Witherspoon, it’s become disappointingly banal, evoking memories of sappy Nicholas Sparks’ novels – with an original song “Carolina,” written and performed by Taylor Swift.

On the Granger Gauge, “Where the Crawdads Sing” is a sincere-but-slogging, sentimental 6, playing in theaters.