Movies from the Heart—Bridget Jones’s Diary

By any way you want to measure it, Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Andrew Davies and Richard Curtis, was a success. The iconic book it was made from was beloved by its readers and the film brought that book to life. In fact, I think it’s one of the very few cases where the film was better than the book—which hardly ever happens.

In addition, the film was made for about $25 million and grossed nearly $400 million. No wonder there were two sequels! You can absolutely count on the fact that when a studio makes a film that grosses this much, there will be sequels.

The premise? Bridget Jones is a young woman looking for love—without much success. So after a disastrous New Year’s party at her parents’ house, she decides to keep a diary where she will catalogue her struggle with losing weight as well as her commitment to cutting down on cigarettes and alcohol. And, most of all, to find a proper boyfriend.

Take a look at a trailer for the film.

I looked at several clips from the film and guess what? I never found one that I felt captured the essence of this movie. It’s fun, fast-moving, funny, touching… and absolutely full of romance.

One of the things that makes it work is that it’s a triangle love story—always a good choice. And we’re presented with a guy who appears to be the perfect boyfriend material. He’s suave, funny, attractive—he’s a little full of himself, but has all the character that our Bridget finds appealing. And we love that he’s accepting of our imperfect Bridget [i.e., not super slender, not perfect] and we continue to like him… until we, and Bridget, discover that he’s really involved with, and soon engaged to, someone else.

And, of course, the third spoke of the triangle is someone she can’t stand. When we see him at the beginning of the film at that fateful New Year’s Day party he refers to her as a “verbally incontinent spinster”… she pretends not to hear and puts on a happy face, but we SOOO feel for her.

Sometimes a film is all about architecture. You build your story, brick by brick. And in the classic triangle love story the guy that seems SO not right at the beginning ends up being the guy the main character ends up with. And the guy who seemed super-right at the beginning turns out to be totally wrong by the end.

It’s a tried-and-true formula. But your goal as a writer is to make it different from all the other triangle love stories out there. And you do that with character so do that work on your characters and throw some different and fun twists in your story, and you’ll be on your way.

Next week we’ll look at a story about matchmaking—Clueless.

Copyright © Diane Lake

29Sep24

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