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Sally Phillips and Renee Zellweger: Sharon ("Shazza") and Bridget
The Diaries of Bridget Jones
The inquiry of The Diaries of Bridget Jones into the single life is to find over and over again the truth in experiencing the wrong man. Partly because of the character of the inquiry the fatiguing expedition to Happiness is amusing.
The director Sharon Maquire chose Renee Zellweger to act the female lead role as the eternal single woman Bridget Jones whom one could not be bored of without reading a line of the diaries. The film could have been intolerable if other canditates had acted the role.
The search for the right man is told in the standardized form of ladies magazines. These magazines comment every detail, especially the details which Bridget is occupied with. For instance, Bridget reel off her intentions for the New Year, then she comments ironically herself, and, lastly, she tells herself to stop telling strangers every detail which she can think of. Although Bridget Jones has many appropriate reflections on herself based on the distinctive features of the classical comedy, the reflections do not neutralize her attempts to be interesting, to be good-looking and to be charming.
Certainly, this makes games of the girls who are totally enganged in counting calories and confirming libido as a general motivation for every act, every acquaintance and evey every choice of lingerie, places to go, people to see and to be seen with.
Bridget's comments, thoughts and acts are subordinate to her life project Looking for Mr. Goodbar. And here he is: poor Colin Firth who has the tragic position as second lover. He lacks sense of humour, he is taken in, he talks with friction and he has a colourless expression. He has a woolen pullover with an animal decoracion, and he is introduced to Bridget by her mother. In other words, this second lover has nothing to loose.
Bridget's world is a world where the intellectual niveau is represented by the insight into oneself. Bridget's way to insight is full of much "adult" girltalk and priorities that are typical for the secondary modern school. All the challenges of importance is related to the bathroom scales or to the fact whether one is either slim or thick. Presumably, it is meant to correlate with the phase when Bridget wastes her time, sweat and tears to get the prince who turns into a frog, Hugh Grant.
The diaries of Bridget Jones seems to be a terrible world because of Helen Fielding's comments. The self-examinations are not considered thoroughly in the diaries. This weakness is also found in the manuscript.
It is a success for Bridget when she dumps Mr. Cute (Hugh Grant) in an exertion of self-confidence because he is not sufficient interested in her. But it is a temporary triumph for Bridget's self-confidence.
Presumably, according to Fielding's/Maquire's happy end Bridget's happiness is a man who reads secretly her diary, and who is offended when he is reading about himself in the diary, but because he is straight, he takes coaxing by a lingerie clad Bridget who is running after him in the winter. We shall take part in her sweet exultation because he has accepted her apology to him for his secret reading in her diary.
If Fielding should claim that this is ambivalens or irony, we should not believe her, because it is a bad habit to define every literary blunder as artful expressions.
But if Fielding should have meant to describe Bridget's self-examinations as irony (which is doubtful), Sharon Maquire does not manage to celebrate the embrace with Fielding's intentional ambivalens in the manuscript. Sharon Macquire's visible problem is to decide the niveau of the film. When Renee Zellweger is acting brilliantly, it is not her problem when the scenes appears as individual show numbers. The scenes are amusing as show numbers, but they lack some correlations with Bridget's illusive reality.
Anyhow, the film acts and the stupid Bridget is sympathic and entertaining, but it presupposes a sympathy with Renee Zellweger and her register of expressions. Renee Zellweger's Bridget is a typical anti-heroine whom we shall not admire, but we shall sympatize with her. We shall symphatize with a female Woody Allen who has all her small neurosises intact. If one can estimate an actress who can act a totally stupid person without assuming the stupidity as an permanent quality of the actress or her role, it is possible to experience this character as an interesting person or a nice acquaintance. Sharon, one of Bridget's friends, is acted by the genial and sexy Sally Phillips. Renee Zellweger and Sally Phillips prove the fact that Sharon Maquire has an equisite taste in female folly. Renee Zellweger is brilliant in the leading female role, and her parodic acting shows her very good qualities as an actress.
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