A “verbally incontinent spinster, who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and dresses like her mother” – not an auspicious introduction to Bridget Rose Jones, however correct.
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New pants, usual Bridget. Pic: Common Footage
Three a long time after the character got here to life on the web page, and following a trio of earlier movies, Zellweger has returned to “this just endearing character” for a fourth film, Mad About The Boy.
With returning characters together with Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Emma Thompson, new relationships are additionally launched, with Leo Woodall and Chiwetel Ejiofor becoming a member of the forged.
Zellweger goes on: “I love her. I love her humour. I love her vulnerability. I love her imperfection. I love the opportunity to play out her miscalculating a plan and it maybe, surprising her in her execution. I love all of it.”
The primary movie earned Zellweger an Oscar nod for her portrayal of Bridget, and the character’s title has gone into the lexicon.
“She looks the way she looks when she gets up. She’s late for school. She drops things when she shouldn’t drop them. She makes the wrong speech when she needs to give the right speech. And all of those things make you just fall in love with her.”
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Director Michael Morris chats to Zellweger on set. Pic: Common Footage
After years of soul-searching, her creator, Helen Fielding, has determined the important thing to Bridget’s attraction lies in her revealing “the gap between how you feel you are supposed to be and how you really are inside.”
Fielding’s nameless columns for The Impartial, first printed in 1995, have been a word-of-mouth hit. The 4 subsequent books have been bestsellers.
Produced by Working Title – the manufacturing firm behind British hits together with 4 Weddings And A Funeral, Love Truly and Notting Hill – the primary movie took greater than $280m (£225m) worldwide.
Studio bosses shall be hoping Mad About The Boy will work an analogous magic, and with ticket pre-sales proving larger than Barbie, it is trying promising.
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“The figure of Bridget Jones, both in writing and then in film represented a new kind of young woman who had been to university, who knew her Jane Austen, and who knew a little bit about feminism.
“There was a way wherein the data of feminism haunted the Bridget Jones phenomena, however in a approach that she wished to discard it and put it up to now.
“She wanted to be feminine. She wanted to be sexy. She wanted to [wear a] Playboy bunny outfit. And in her dream landscape, she imagined a white wedding with lots of kids in the Home Counties. There was a sense in which what the column and then the film did was offered a kind of release from the burden of being feminist”.
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Pic: Rex Options
She says Bridget sporting a see-through shirt and miniskirt into the workplace was her approach of claiming: “We have to live with sexual inequality, it’s not such a bad thing. I want to be a real girl. I want to enjoy my sexuality if it gets me the attention I want from the boss”.
McRobbie goes on: “In some ways, you could say she was legitimising a kind of sexual inequality in the workplace, but in a fun, light-hearted way.”
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Pic: Rex Options
“I think one of the reasons why people react strongly to her is because she was turned into an icon. She was supposed to be the woman of the 90s…
“That is once you get this polarisation the place you are feeling like you must both be in favour of Bridget or not. However really, she’s such a posh character that there is one thing for everyone.
“She was this single woman who had fun. Yes, she ends up with a man in the end. But that isn’t the main part. The main part is that she is successful. Even though she makes mistakes, she is a normal weight and is still chased by men.
“Why Bridget nonetheless lives on is as a result of she gave individuals the primary message – be your self and you are going to be okay.”
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Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor joins the forged. Pic: Common Footage
Bross additionally says that Bridget helped show {that a} movie targeted on the feminine expertise might be as profitable as a male-led film.
“In the 80s, rom coms were all about neurotic men finding love… The female leads in them had very little to say.”
A working example is Julia Roberts’s actress heroine in Notting Hill – as Bross says – “her silence is so normalised that Ronan Keating wrote the song When You Say Nothing At All celebrating her silence”.
However then in comes Bridget: “She talks. She has voiceovers. We see her thoughts. It’s about her. It’s not just about her and love, it’s about her in her job, we see her working. We see her making mistakes. We see her.”
Bross goes on: “Who doesn’t like to see themselves represented on film? Representation matters very much. And here was this flawed woman who got the guy in the end.”
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Zellweger and Leo Woodall in Bridget Jones: Mad In regards to the Boy. Pic: Common Footage
Each McRobbie and Bross say they are going to be watching Mad About The Boy.
However is it the identical previous Bridget we’ll see within the new movie? With a really totally different tone to earlier instalments, can followers stay up for the dollop of nostalgia they’re doubtless craving?
As McRobbie rightly notes, the expertise of the Gen Z viewers watching the film at present may be very totally different to that of their predecessors.
“It’s a much tougher world than it was certainly in the early 2000s and even in the second film. Young women have to deal with toxic masculinity, and they have to navigate their way through sexuality and they’re much more aware of sexual violence.”
It begs the query, will Bridget have the identical attraction in 2025 as she did in 2001?
Bross says she nonetheless has a lot to supply: “This character is like an old friend. So even if she’s not entirely up to date, you will still love her…
“When persons are burdened, once they’re anxious, they flip to the acquainted. Individuals do want one thing soothing. They want narratives that assist them settle down in aggravating instances.”
Meanwhile, Zellweger promises Bridget will still exhibit all the qualities that have made her beloved worldwide.
“I feel it is only a continuation of those genuine representations of an individual’s expertise and totally different life chapters.
“It feels like the essence of the person is the same and her very familiar optimism, her vulnerability and her sweetness and her humour, all that’s the same.”
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is in cinemas now.
