It's
Breakfast at Tiffany's
in tummy-control big knickers
By
Jane Shilling, The Mail on Sunday
Bridget
Jones is one of the great, British female icons. Even if you
can't stand her, there is no getting away from her and her ubiquitous
best-selling diary. Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse and George Eliot's Maggie
Tulliver undoubtedly had their admirers in their day, but did Woodhouse or
Tulliver actually change the way women talked? Could Austen or
Eliot have invented
a whole new style of communication, as infectious as measles, the way Jones's creator, Helen
Fielding, has done? Did either of them coin a phrase as supremely useful
as Fielding's pithy 'emotional f***wittage' to describe the infinite
variety of ways in which men misbehave towards women? Jones's diary telegraphese and obsessive counting of calories, alcohol
units, cigarettes and weight gains and losses,
have informed the lingua franca of an entire generation of women. Even men
have warmed to Jones's quirky charm. But she has now emerged from between
the covers of her diary, and is about to burst on to the big screen. And
the question that her fans are bound to ask is, has our heroine sold out?
Has she cleaned up her act, lost pounds and chucked the fags and booze in
favour of mineral water and fresh fruit?
Well,
the answer is, yes, and no - but, you will be relieved to hear, more no
than yes. It's no secret that women from beyond these shores didn't warm
to Jones initially. (The sight of well brought-up young women getting
plastered and falling over in public is not regarded as a hoot in quite
the way it is in modern Britain.) As a result, the Hollywood version is
smart, sweet and sassy - not the epithets which immediately spring to mind
when one thinks of the original sluttish and scattered Bridget Jones's
Diary. But the slightly rancid appeal of the novel has been replaced by an
endearingly ditzy version which is a sort of Breakfast at Tiffany's in
tummy-control big knickers.
The
story is set in a curiously idealised London, where Jones's flat commands
a view of a Street of such improbable Dickensian charm that you expect a
hansom cab to come clattering around the corner at any moment. Despite
being on a lowly clerk's wage, her pad boasts a loft-style interior with
chic Bohemian décor. And outside, when it snows, the white powder never
turns to filthy slush. Then, when it isn't snowing, the sun shines on
fields of rippling corn and burgeoning flower gardens. The weather, in
other words, is far too well behaved.
So
brilliant is the sunshine that it has even infused Jones's soul. Renée
Zellweger brings an engaging quirkiness to the lead character. There is a
lightness to the movie - and to Zellweger's portrayal - which allows it to
push the outer limits of decency while remaining funny. Somehow, it seems
to have created its own licence, depicting Jones and her boss, Daniel
Cleaver (played with masterly creepiness by Hugh Grant), performing a
sexual act which, until recently, was technically illegai, while retaining
a 15 certificate.
In
the transition from page to screen, the wry chronicle of high anxiety that
is the novel has metamorphosed into a screwball sex comedy. The cast may
be starry (beside Zellweger, Grant and Colin Firth, there are carneo
appearances by that notoriously reclusive duo, Salman Rushdie and Lord
Archer, playing themselves at a killingly funny publishing party) and
Jones's life may be more than a trifle glossier than the version she
confided to her diary, but the quick wit, the sharp tongue (speak first,
regret later) and the wild eccentricity are still there, ably supported by
brilliant performances from such class acts as Celia Imrie and Honor
Blackman.
This
may be the cappuccino version of Bridget Jones's Diary - light, sweet and
frothy - but it's none the worse for that. Besides, the sight of Grant and
Firth beating each other to a pulp in a London Street, all for love of a
plump girl in huge knickers and a mini-skirt still crumpled from the linen
basket, is awfully good for morale. Crack open the Chardonnay girls. |