I owe my career to Bridget Jones
Iowe everything to Bridget Jones. In the late 1990s, when Helen Fielding’s newspaper column about being a hopeless singleton had taken off, the editor of the Sunday broadsheet I was a minion on came to my desk saying he needed a hit copycat, and as ‘your name is Jones and you’ve never had a boyfriend’, I got the job. I’ve been writing my column ever since, while Fielding’s career has gone into the stratosphere. I still watch the first two films of the books: Renée Zellweger’s sweet face, awful clothes, worse attic flat, ailing career, ageing parents and terrible luck with men mirrored my life. It isn’t an exaggeration to say her optimism – that things would turn out OK even if we never could afford a whole house or get married or have children or reach 8st 2lb – was an inspiration for those of us who had ever been on a diet (in my case since the age of 11) or been cheated on or been stumped for something intelligent to say at parties. Who only have legs up to here (indicates something in the region of a dachshund), not up to here (indicates arm pits).
I so, so, so wanted to love the new film. There was Bridget’s plumptious face above the Odeon, 20ft high, alongside that of Colin Firth, achingly dashing. Imagine my disappointment to discover the airbrushing budget, as well as that for cameos, must have been astronomical: in the film, Mark Darcy is acceptably craggy, bespectacled and even more bad tempered. It’s Bridget’s appearance that comes as a shock. She’s unrecognisable. She has become what she always abhorred: a stick insect. She has legs up to HERE! (indicates the stratosphere). The only place she gains weight during the entire movie is on her stomach: the sort of high, round baby bump only ever seen on the likes of Elle Macpherson: it’s isolated, like postBrexit Britain, and doesn’t seep to legs, or face, or rump, like on a
normal person. (Note to producers: it’s a bad idea to include flashbacks, as they only serve to highlight Bridget’s deflation.)
But even worse than the fact that Bridget has betrayed those of us who gaze longingly at a tiramisu, give in (the producers left chocolate on every seat of the cinema for our showing; I imagine every last Aero Bubble was eaten given the depression by the end), then are awash with guilt the next day, is the fact she has abandoned her sunny optimism. The word Dooom! is etched across her face, telling me she’s given up trying to have fun and has become like her best friends Jude and Shazza: trapped in a cat’s cradle of infants and domestic detritus.
Zellweger tries valiantly to conjure up some of the old endearing ticks but even the comedic waddle misfires now she’s thin. She’s catnip to men, too, when surely she should still be struggling, especially as we are told in GREAT BIG LETTERS that she’s aged 43. She falls into bed with handsome, rich, American hunk Patrick Dempsey, cavorting with no care for her naked body, oozing confidence from every teeny-tiny Hollywood pore.
There are no longer any wobbly bits: only the script is saggy, its premise that women should give in, sprog up. Rely on a man, because you’re rubbish at your job. Keep the weight off, or else (there is only one aside about her weight, from the glorious Celia Imrie, saying of the baby bump: ‘Oh, I thought you’d just put the weight back on’). I really thought Bridge was better than that. She’s a rubber ring that has been punctured, no use at all when you need it most: when you wake at 3am, knowing you will die alone, eaten by Alsatians. I won’t spoil the ending, but suffice to say Bridget is serene, she’s sane, she’s normal. She’s no longer one of us.