AND a bit like what happens when Mary Poppins is about to arrive at the Banks house, the other aspiring nannies disappear, by magic or by the awareness of not being able to compete with her. On February 13th in cinemas, ready for Valentine’s Day, and from the 27th on Netflix, Bridget Jones returns after nine yearsthe most excessive, romantic, wrong, messy heroine of the last decades.
A romantic comedy, a concentration of lightness and clever writing skills that are competition-proof. It’s a safe bet that the box office will reward this fourth cinematic chapter, Bridget Jones. A boy’s loveas he did with his previous ones: the first three films grossed 760 million dollars worldwide; just as the market has rewarded the inspiring book since its release in 1995, Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding: over 10 million copies sold.
Why we like Bridget Jones
What does this heralded loser have that keeps us attached to her, that we feel close to her? Renée Zellweger, who gave her a face on the screen, gave this answer: «She is an authentic, real woman. We identify with her because she is not perfect, she is not the usual romantic comedy doll. Bridget knows what it feels like to be alone, or to suffer for love. She knows how difficult it is to find the right man. And isn’t that a problem for everyone?”.
Inspiration from Jane Austen
She drinks, smokes, indulges in food to compensate for the emotional void, resulting in a constant struggle with the scales, she is a jumble of contradictions, frequenter of hyperbole, excessive in everything. But he loves life and is self-aware. And that’s no small thing. Bridget comes from afar, from Jane Austen and from her own Pride and prejudiceas admitted by Helen Fielding who debuted it in the British newspaper The Independent on 28 February 1995, in a regular, “light” column, where she recounted the joys and sorrows of a 30-year-old single woman in search of great love, sexually free and determined to assert herself at work. A woman of that present, the nineties, romantic yes, but immersed in a post-feminist society.
Due to its ironic, humorous writing, Bridget Jones’s Diary ended up straight in the chick lit literary genre, a narrative genre that takes up stylistic features of the romance novel, immersing them in a super contemporary reality, with young women working in fashion, publishing, advertising and live in dynamic metropolises, New York, London, where the possibilities for interesting encounters multiply.
It is no coincidence that Sex and the City is also from those years, published in installments in a newspaper and became the cult series we all know, broadcast from 1998 to 2004 on HBO, also with a Prince Charming to chase (Mark Darcy in BridgetBig in Sex) And with the obligatory happy ending taught by Jane Austen: marriage.
We are all Bridget Jones
If we feel Bridget so close it is not only because she is the heroine of imperfection and therefore reassuring, in solidarity with our limits, awkward and inadequate as each of us has felt more than oncestubborn in chasing a man, right or wrong, happy to end up between the sheets of an alpha or beta male. Bridget has been telling us for 30 years. And the dates this time serve to understand why it survived the competition.
It was 2001 when the first film was released, Bridget Jones’s Diary: she is a single thirty-year-old, who sleeps with the his womanizing boss (Hugh Grant)has journalistic ambitions, tries to be sexy with unlikely miniskirts resting on a body with at least 10 extra kilos (Renée Zellweger gained 13 pounds to get the role) and after years meets a neighbor of his parents’ house, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth)a human rights lawyer. Two loves, without fully understanding which one is the right one.
She in the middle with her granny panties, the gaffes, the “spinster and lunatic” behavior, as she defines herself. Luckily Darcy is fine with it anyway, enough to say «I really like you just the way you are”, that is the phrase that everyone would have liked to hear (and some lucky ones succeeded). Closing credits on the two of them kissing in the rain. Almost a happy ending.
The return between Tinder and cosmetic surgery
Three years later it arrives What a mess, Bridget Jones! (2004), here too with some pearls of wisdom for peers scattered around the world looking for love: «The secret is to feel gorgeous despite appearances». She sleeps with both of her “loves”, and they both appreciate her performances (another lesson for us who followed her: you have to get along well between the sheets). The film ends with Mark being close to her.
It takes 12 years for it to arrive Bridget Jones’s Baby: the former single, turned television producer, is lucky to find herself, by mistake, in the tent of Patrick Dempsey (Jack Qwant)so much so that after a few weeks she doesn’t know whether she is pregnant with him or with Mark Darcy, who she met again and loved sexually. DNA test, some melody phrases. But this time too Bridget tells us where we arrived, what happened to us: there’s Tinder to meet another lonely heart, the lightness of taking what comes, “what I need is a good brush-up”, economic independence, a position of responsibility in the world of work. She is 43 years old, she is an elderly primipara, they remind herbut she goes straight to the goal and marries Darcy, as Jane Austen taught her.
The world outside has also changed, now between Botox, facelifts and needle sticks the message of being forced to eternal youth passes. Renée Zellweger herself changed her expression, sparking social media and making herself almost unrecognizable in certain scenes. This time too, he throws questions on the table: Is Tinder okay? Is cosmetic surgery okay?
Back in the fray
Renée Zellweger and Leo Woodall) in “Bridget Jones” by Michael Morris.
February 13th Bridget aligns herself again with the present, with the many women and divas who have hooked up with much younger guys: Demi Moore, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez… After four years of widowhood (Mark Darcy is dead), two children, and with the old flame reappearing on the scene (Daniel Cleaver-Hugh Grant), Bridget could be a mother, the friend, the producer. Instead he throws himself back into the love fray with two options: the children’s teacher or a muscular twenty-seven year old.
Renée Zellweger almost unrecognizable, with an outsized botulismstill manages to have his say when it comes to sex and love. Moral? If the heroine of imperfection has held sway for 30 years, mixing self-awareness, romanticism and desire for life, it is precisely because she accepts herself and doesn’t give up. The words of Alda Merini come to mind: «I should apologize to myself for always believing that I was never enough».
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