There are certain topics that get the WhatsApp groups hopping. For the neighbourhood groups it might be parking interlopers or allegations of “encouraging the foxes”. The school WhatsApps are never more alive than on the eve of World Book Day when everyone’s forgotten to get a costume together, or during a lice infestation. Hen party groups spring into life only when there’s money to be collected and memory books to be aggressively compiled. And I would wager that nothing has enlivened the WhatsApp groups of women of a certain age more than the release of the final Bridget Jones film.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy was out in time for Valentine’s Day and since early February my groups have been buzzing with plans to commune and watch. Would we book the Stella cinema in Rathmines with its cosy armchairs and little pouffes that open up to store your coat and handbag? Would we try to remember where we watched the first Bridget film in 2001 and make a pilgrimage back there? Unfortunately, my 2001 viewing was at the Dara Cinema in Naas, which closed in 2007, but I’m not beyond returning to the sacred spot and pouring out a glass of chardonnay for Bridget right there on Main Street.
She means a lot to me, our Brig. I read the Helen Fielding book as a teenager and it was the perfect companion to the other great diarist in my life, Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole. When the 2001 film came out I was just 20 and even though Bridget – played to surprising perfection by American actor Renée Zellweger – was a chaotic, diarrhoea-mouthed wine-guzzler, she was aspirational. She had a job in publishing and two handsome men in the form of cad Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and uptight human rights lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) after her. What more could a girl want?
In hindsight, there was plenty wrong with Bridget Jones, not least the book and film’s slavishness to diet culture and insinuation that Bridget, at an average to below-average weight, needed to lose some stones and pounds. But she was also single in a sea of “smug marrieds” and determined to forge ahead in her career, no matter how many arse-baring gaffes she made. She has been a constant comfort to me and so many women I know. That summer of 2001 I travelled to New York with four friends for several months to waitress in a Long Island country club on a J1 visa. The Bridget Jones Diary soundtrack came across the Atlantic with us, and we would lie in the dark in our bunk beds wailing along to the Gabrielle song Out of Reach when we felt particularly homesick. Once, many years later, while taking refuge in a friend’s spare room during a horrific break-up I located a copy of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason on her bookshelves and turned immediately to the chapter where Brig gets a big chance to interview Colin Firth and fumbles the whole thing through her inability to move past his infamous wet shirt scene as Mr Darcy in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Having Colin Firth play Bridget’s own Mr Darcy in the films was an enjoyable touch, but it did mean we never got to see the hilarious interview scene played out on screen.
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I’m not ready to let Bridget Jones go just yet. She has been a constant comfort to me and so many women I know
As the WhatsApp groups decreed, I had to see Mad About the Boy in a cinema and with a group of pals. We planned it meticulously and transferred ticket, pizza and wine money between our Revolut accounts with the payee reference “Come the f**k on Bridget!”. Word on the WhatsApps was that the film had people laughing, but also crying for the last half-hour. This paper’s Donald Clarke called it “easily the best film in the series”. I was prepared with my packet of tissues and bag of Maltesers decanted into my popcorn.
It did not disappoint. Bridget is as Bridget as ever despite the property porn house and two darling children. Her friends have barely changed, her hair is as imperfect as ever and she still has abysmal taste in coats. I delighted in the references to the first movie from the blue soup to the giant knickers. There’s even a nod to the wet Pride and Prejudice shirt. It may be the fourth film in the series but really it’s a sequel to the 2001 classic. There’s even a “Chechnya” thrown in. As I left the screening, I was straight back on to WhatsApp to arrange to join another outing to see it again. I’m not ready to let Bridget Jones go just yet.
