DECRYPTAGE – A pop culture icon, Renée Zellweger’s blue-blooded Londoner returns to the silver screen in February. A way, perhaps, to rewrite a contested heritage.
A compulsive smoker always ready to pour herself a glass of white wine, in a perpetual battle against her love handles, a bad cook… When she appeared in 1995 in the columns of the English daily newspaper The Independent Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones modernized pop culture’s image of the single woman. A revolution, in fact. Her adventures have filled four novels (selling over 15 million copies worldwide) and inspired as many films, including the latest Bridget Jones: Mad About Him is due in cinemas on February 12 in time for Valentine’s Day.
In her early days, the Londoner reflected the daily life and struggles of thirty-somethings: growing up, landing a stable job, getting rid of her ball and chain of suitors, facing the (very heavy) family and social pressure to settle down. Bridget was flawed, fallible, bad-faith, immature, funny. She embodied the gulf between perfection…
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