 Starring: Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Gemma Jones, Jim Broadbent
Director: Sharon Maguire
Year Of Release: 2001
Plot: Bridge Jones is a single, 30-something who starts a diary to try and improve herself. Although one of her first resolutions is to avoid caddish men like her boss, Daniel Cleaver, he starts flirting with her shamelessly, which she finds it impossible to resist. However she also keeps running into Mark Darcy, a rather staid barrister, who may not be as exciting as Daniel, but could be just what Bridget needs. |
I don’t really have a huge amount to say about Brigdet Jones’s Diary, other than that it made me slightly worried about the female of the species. When the book and then the film came out, Bridget was held up as some sort of role model, with women seemingly queuing up to say how they recognised themselves in the figure of the 30-something singleton.
Does this mean there are millions of women running around who are neurotic, borderline alcoholics, who feel like a complete failure unless they have a man to constantly bouy up their non-existent self esteem, and who are incapable of walking down the street without making a complete ass out of themselves? Who knows, maybe there are.
Did the women who were so keen to say how much they were like Bridget not realise that the woman was a completely idiotic bint who had the self-awareness of a hamster? It would have been okay if people looked at her as an almost cautionary figure about what happens if you don’t actually have a life of your own and are constantly looking to other people to provide you with a sense of self worth. However she wasn’t, she was taken as some sort of role model who women aspired to be like.
It all seemed rather bizarre to me, with Bridget seemingly putting sexual equality back 30 years, because if this is what women are really like, it seems unfair for society to suggest that they have jobs and independence, as the film makes it look like leaving the house is a major trial women shouldn’t have to be put through.
It’s not even like Bridget really learns anything during the film, because even though there’s the faux choice between Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver at the end, ultimately Bridget’s attitude still seems to be that the best man for her is the one who’s interested in her, rather than anything else. The main criteria for choosing Mark is that he likes her just the way she is and is boring so he probably won’t break her heart, which seems more an indictment of his taste in women than anything else. It’s essentially saying that rather than trying to become a fully functional, self-confident person in your own right who can get into a relationship on your own terms, you should just find a man who will prop you up and not mind that you’re barely able to stand up without turning into a wobbling jelly of insecurity and neurosis.
There’s nothing wrong with films that explore why some women in their 30s wonder why they aren’t in a solid, long-term relationship, but as the answer in Bridget Jones’s Diary seems to be that it’s because these women are idiots, I don’t quite understand why she’s seen as such a great role model. Unless, of course, women are like Bridget, and I’m just giving them too much credit.
TIM ISAAC
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