Filmrecension: Bridget Jones Diary av Helen Fielding

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Bridget Jones Diary
Director: Sharon Maguire
Play time: 1 hour, 37 minutes


Bridget Jones, a single woman living and working in London, has almost everything she needs in life; a nice apartment, two loving parents, a good job in the publishing business and three wonderful friends. But the fact that Bridget is in her early thirties without even the slightest glimpse of a boyfriend or husband is a big, dark cloud in her life.
Well, not only in Bridget’s life by the way, her friends; Tom, Shazzer and Jude are also very concerned over her “forever single status’’ and, as the good friends they are, they try to help as much as they possibly can. Bridget’s parents are also very involved in the whole love carousel and on Christmas day Mrs Jones makes her turkey curry buffet to a blind date service.

Mr Mark Darcy has been invited, a top lawyer and handsome man. He seems to have it all; a good career, the look, intelligence and money, but what Bridget misses is the humor that he obviously doesn’t have. When he thinks Bridget cannot hear him, he calls her a ‘’verbally incontinent spinster who drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney and dresses like her mother’’. That line makes Bridget pretty sure that Mr Darcy is not the man in her dreams, and the search goes on. It doesn’t take long before she finds herself drewling over her handsome boss, Daniel Cleaver. He surely has stile and of course, a lot of humor, and when he shows interest for Bridget she has a hard time keeping the distance. Even though she has promised herself not to go out with her boss, she soon finds herself sleeping in his arms.
As the time goes on, Bridget finds out that Daniel has an affair with an American woman and, on top of that, they are engaged! Broken hearted and humiliated Bridget fights really hard to get up on her feet again and she gives Daniel her two weeks notice. After all a bit satisfied, knowing that she has got a new job on the television station Sit up Britain. But, as always, the world cannot be perfect; Bridget’s new career shows to be not as easy and glamorous as she thought, her parents marriage is falling apart and there seems to be absolutely no sensible and honourable man to share her life with. After many long twists and turns Bridget and Mark finally falls in love and Mr and Mrs Jones get married a second time. As it should, in a true fairytale, everything turns out right.

This is a classical love story, just written to fit a modern time. I am quite sure that Helen Fielding, the author, has been inspired of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. There are many similarities, for example Daniel lies to Bridget about a dispute between him and Mark, claiming Mark stole his fiancée; in fact, it was the other way around. In Pride and Prejudice, it''''s a dispute between Mr. Wickham and Mr. Darcy, and their background together at Darcy’s father’s estate. The similarities are not only to be seen in the names and characters, but also in the opening line of Jane Austen’s book; “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”, which in the movie has been rewritten to; “It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as one part of your life starts looking up, another part falls to pieces.”
In a way I can see Fielding’s book as a paraphrase to Austen’s, almost a clone, just changed here and there to fit our time, our lifestyles and obviously our language. They use a lot of swearwords and modern, British slang.

When we were going to see Bridget Jones Diary in school I had already seen it twice, so I didn’t have any special thoughts and expectations. It is truly one of my favourite movies, because of its incredible and always so accurate humor, charm and lovely warmness.
It is a feel good film that I believe everyone can enjoy, whether you like romantic comedies or not. It’s almost impossible not to fall in love with this movie and all the wonderful characters, and even though I’ve seen it a thousand times I’m surely going to watch it a thousand times again.

The actors are great; they feel so real and authentic in their roles. Hugh Grant is always a brilliant actor, in my eyes, but in the role as Daniel Cleaver he exceeds himself. As the quiet and sometimes touchy Mark Darcy, Colin Firth does ...