Dir. David Frankel, US, 2006, 109 mins
Cast: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt
Review by Carol Allen
From the opening shots of elegant and painful looking shoes and carefully chosen accessories, we realise we must be in the temple of fashion, a world where style is all and being size six means you are fat.
The heroine of this movie is earnest, would-be journalist Andy (Hathaway). The star is Miranda Priestly (Streep) Andy's monstrous, impossible, demanding boss and editor of the glossy fashion magazine where Andy gets her first job as one of Miranda's overworked assistants. It is an unequal contest.
It is also a lot of fun, as Sex and the City veteran Frankel both revels in, and lovingly mocks, this world of trivia that takes itself seriously as an art form.
Andy's transformation from when she first arrives at "Runway" magazine, the bible of the industry,wearing frumpy jumpers and tweeds and then transforms into a designer dolly, as she knuckles down to playing the fashion game, is a joy, even for those of us who do not worship at the couture altar.
In fact, the clothes throughout the entire film are mouth watering. Which makes her boyfriend (Adrian Grenier), who keeps whingeing on about her selling out on her beliefs, when he is obviously put out that she is putting her job before him, frankly a bit of a drag.
Why is it in movies a woman is always wrong for putting her career ahead of some wimpy, needy bloke?
British Emily Blunt makes a strong impression as Emily, the sharp, bitchy and terrified head of the "clackers", as Andy christens the stiletto wearing slaves who walk in fear of Miranda's every whim. Stanley Tucci is dryly camp, funny and ultimately touching as Miranda's right-hand man, who has devoted his life to his art and who becomes Andy's fairy godfather. And queening it over the lot of them as she "whose opinion is the only one that matters" is the magnificent Meryl, dominating the screen from her first entrance, silver hair impeccably coiffed, outfit perfect down to the last detail and issuing a continuous stream of orders and unreasonable demands.
In Lauren Weisberger's bestseller of the same name, Miranda is simply a monster and the book is a revenge job on the real life editor who treated Weisberger like dirt. Howeve, Streep is far too clever an actress to play a caricature.
She gives a great comic performance as a woman, who is self-centred, capricious and a mistress of the art of the withering put down. But she is also a perfectionist and a feminist, who has clawed her way to the top through sheer hard work, determination and force of personality and sees no conflict between that and demanding 24-hour a day attention and devotion from her female underlings. Also she knows there is a price to pay for being who she is, and we occasionally get a glimpse of that underneath her facade. And, after all, if Miranda were a male boss, no-one would think there was anything unusual in her behaviour at all.
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