Photo: lilartsy/Unsplash
Bridget Jones is back this year with a new chapter in the long-running diary of her romantic life. Jones is the protagonist of the Bridget Jones’ franchise, which started with the 2001 film, Bridget Jones's Diary, starring Renée Zellweger as Bridget, Colin Firth as Mark Darcy, and Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver.
In the first film, Bridget is a 30-something woman living in London who works at a publishing company. Bridget’s life is also a bit of a mess. Early in the film, Mark Darcy says to his mother that Bridget, is “a verbally incontinent spinster who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish, and dresses like her mother.”
Overhearing the conversation, Bridget vows to quit smoking and drinking and to lose weight (that Zellweger was considered “fat” in this role is ludicrous and certainly the cause of many women’s body dysmorphia in the early 2000s).
Bridget has a fling with her boss, the bad boy Daniel Cleaver, who, it turns out, is engaged to an American colleague named Lara. There’s a fight between Darcy and Cleaver and a final scene in which Bridget, wearing a sweater, sneakers, and her underpants, runs after Mark Darcy down a street snowy street in London. Bridget got her happily every after.
Let me just say, this movie is hilarious. Zellweger is so great as Jones. It’s one of those films in which you can’t see anyone else playing the role. I am also a big fan of Colin Firth (dreamy!), who I first saw in the BBC’s 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice. Helen Fielding, the writer who created Bridget Jones for a column in The Independent on which the film franchise is based, created Mark Darcy based on Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. A good friend of mine gave me the DVD of this series on my 40th birthday, and I still love it.
However, there were times in the movie when I wanted to yell, “Bridget, get your shit together!” Bridget is a trainwreck. Yes, she ends up with Mr. Darcy in the end — sorry for the spoilers, if you haven’t watched it — but the ride to get there is a very bumpy one, much of which is honestly Bridget’s own damn fault.
As I was thinking about writing this post, I tried to think of a movie in which there isn’t drama, mostly on the part of the single woman, whose journey to partnership status isn’t a disaster.
There are other films that follow similar plot lines to Bridget’s. Think of Amy Schumer in Trainwreck and Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids, by far one of my favourite female comedies. In Trainwreck, Schumer plays a party-and-man loving magazine writer who falls for a sports medicine doctor. In Bridesmaids, Wiig plays Annie, who has hit rock bottom in many ways but is serving as the maid of honour in her best friend’s wedding. It’s the planning and runup to the big day that is behind all the chaos and comedy from Wiig and the rest of the cast. (The scene on the plane to the bachelorette party is the best: “There’s a colonial woman on the wing!")
Also, in these movies, the only other option for women seems to be a as “smug” married person, as Bridget called them. In Trainwreck, Schumer’s sister, Kim, seems to have a perfect marriage with one stepson, and another baby on the way. In Bridesmaids, Maya Rudolph’s character, Lillian, is preparing to get married in a lavish wedding.
All these romantic disasters make for great movies with lots of laughs. Of course, no directors are making money from films about single women binging Netflix with her cats and Cros and no chill. (I’m not thinking of anyone particular). But is there no women in between those looking for partners and those who have them?
There are films in which women aren’t chasing romance but adventure instead. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but these are the Disney princess films. I don’t really recall watching many of these when I was young, but I did watch them when my daughter was a little girl. I remember being a bit horrified at Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, the earliest of Disney’ princess flicks, and how those princesses really didn’t even seem to speak in the movies that bear their names.
Over the years, some of the Disney princess films had female leads who are heroines with no romantic interests. Finally!
There was Moana, and Elsa from Frozen, a film whose theme song “Let It Go” I’m sure a lot of parents know by heart, to their frustration. My favourite princess was Merida from Brave, the red head who certainly wasn’t a damsel in distress and who was an excellent at archery. I tried archery once and it was quite fun, even though I’m not a good shot.
Maybe it’s easier for society to swallow if the young woman who doesn’t end up with a happily ever after in her story is animated character, and not a real woman. But Disney still has many, many films, even recent ones, in which the princess finds her prince.
Apparently, Fielding, a journalist by trade who created the Bridget Jones character, was originally asked to write her column in the Independent about her own single life. She declined, saying chronicling her single life would be too embarrassing. Instead, she offered to tell the story and conundrums of women in their 30s through a character. So, we all got Bridget Jones.
In Mad About the Boy, Bridget is in her 50s, a mom of two children, and again on the dating scene after Mark Darcy is killed in a landmine explosion. The movie is based on Fielding’s book about her own life as a widow with two children.
I am a bit like Bridget in the upcoming movie. I’m in my 50s, a journalist, have one now-adult kid, and no partner. But the idea of hitting the dating scene again seems, well, completely exhausting. Not that I haven’t been the engineer of my own train going a little bit off its track in the past.
Instead, here I am, writing to you all about my single life. I’m not embarrassed about it, unlike Fielding was more than 30 years ago. Maybe that’s progress? It’s certainly far less messy.
Suzanne
Waiting for my own movie franchise
PS: You all need an earworm today