In Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Bridget (Renee Zellwegger) is alone once again, widowed four years ago, when Mark (Colin Firth) was killed on a humanitarian mission in the Sudan. She’s now a single mother to 10-year-old Billy and six-year-old Mabel, and is stuck in a state of emotional limbo, raising her children with help from her loyal friends and even her former lover, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant).
Pressured by her Urban Family — Shazzer, Jude and Tom, her work colleague Miranda, her mother, and her gynecologist Dr. Rawlings (Oscar® winner Emma Thompson) — to forge a new path toward life and love, Bridget goes back to work and even tries out the dating apps, where she’s soon pursued by a dreamy and enthusiastic younger man (Leo Woodall). Now juggling work, home and romance, Bridget grapples with the judgment of the perfect mums at school, worries about Billy as he struggles with the absence of his father, and engages in a series of awkward interactions with her son’s rational-to-a-fault science teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
With Bridget returning to Australian cinema screens, just in time for Valentine’s Day, on February 13, Nick L’Barrow travelled to the Sydney press junket to chat with director Michael Morris about exploring grief through comedy, making rom-coms for adults, and the unexpected connection between this film and one of Nick’s favourite TV shows.
Nick: Michael, it’s such pleasure to meet you. I thought this movie was truly wonderful!
Michael Morris: Thank you!
Nick: I’d love to start with the fact that you’re coming into this franchise at the fourth film, and there are so many elements that we as the audience love about Bridget, and about these films. What was the experience like for you in honouring those elements we love, but also putting your own voice as a filmmaker into it?
Michael Morris: I mean, the first thing is that it’s such a gift as a filmmaker, in my mind anyway, to step into something which has so much richness. Obviously, you start with the incredible cast. Honestly, I can’t even imagine a deeper cast all the way through, with every single character. People came in to do single scenes just because they love this franchise, or they’ve been a part of the franchise.
So, I think for me, you want to honour it, right? There’s all kinds of easter eggs hidden through it. There’s lots of little glimpses, more than meets the eye when you first see it, that you can go back and find things. And that’s important to me because I enjoy that when I watch franchises.
I think any with any film, I can only make my version of it. That’s all I know how to do! I would be terrible at copying someone else’s style. So, it’s always going to be mine in the sense that, for better or worse, the things that I find funny are going to be in there. The things that I find emotional. But this particular subject matter, and where Bridget is in her life, lends itself perhaps to the films that I’m drawn to. My hope is that it feels a bit different, but with enough to hold on to.
Nick: I truly think people will still feel that in this film, and what resonates with people so well about this character and story, is that it’s a romance film about adults, for adults! We have characters who drop F-bombs or talk about sex so casually. Is there a freedom to exploring love and romance without the restrictions that say maybe a PG-13 style film may give you?
Michael Morris: Yeah, that’s a really good point, because our mates talk like that. That is a real part of what this franchise has always been. You’re right, really, because there’s different kind of romantic comedies. There’s a certain type of romantic-comedy, which is completely valid, but where everyone is completely beautiful on an island somewhere.
And then there’s this particular type of rom-com that is more about the way people live. I put Bridget more – this particular Bridget anyway – in that camp. Hopefully it feels a bit like a real London. And people talk that way, they swear at each other and all the rest of it.
Nick: I think what adds to that idea of observing the way people live also comes through Bridget’s exploration of grief within this story. Was that another element that you felt was important to explore?
Michael Morris: It’s really what I was drawn to before anything else. Even before there was a script, I was drawn to the subject of the book that it was based on. It had that essential thing of Mark Darcy is no longer here, and so the filmmaking process became about, and I mean years before we started filming, how do we drill down on that? How hard can we push this? How hard can we honestly bring the audience along with it?
I had the luxury of talking with Renee, and talking to Hugh [Grant], and everybody about the sense of loss and how a character that is as upbeat and kind of wonderful as Bridget… how does she handle it? That was really the engine of the film.
Nick: With those emotional moments, how was it collaborating with Renee as someone who has spent so much time with this character?
Michael Morris: Yeah, it was central as you could imagine. Most of the heavy lifting was done way before we got to set, and we just dove into the material together. We had lots of meetings before filming and tried to really understand that we were making the same film together, and that we wanted to stretch the visual language of the franchise, and the emotional language of the franchise.
Renee was completely on board in the best way. She’s such an expert on Bridget. She had unbelievable insight into the character. And that’s such a helpful thing to keep as kind of a truism when you’re dealing with grief. It would be very easy to slip into self pit, but Renee was like, “That’s not how Bridget would deal with it”. And that really informed the first half of the film.
Nick: I am a sucker for a one-shot, long take. And the oner you do in this film where Bridget is soliciting all of the advice she’s received from the people in her life, and they way you move the camera around the room, and block the actors, is incredible. But, I’m curious to know what the narrative decisions behind choosing to do that scene in a one-take shot?
Michael Morris: I love that you connected with that, because it’s a real challenge! That one is interesting because it is sort of introduced like that in the script actually. And what could have been a more conventional montage or cutting to a scene in the bar with Shazza and Tom telling her what to do, it really became about what the feeling is when you’re bombarded with really well-meaning people sort of telling you how to feel.
And so, I wanted it to just be a part of her everyday life. To shoot it, I actually had these fantastic actors, and we rehearsed it for three or four hours. And people were hiding under tables, running out of the room, all as the camera moves smoothly through the kitchen. It was really fun.
Nick: The choreography of that, and the controlled chaos of the beginning of the film, is so well constructed. And I am a huge fan of Kingdom. I love that show! So I’m curious if filming the fight scenes on that show helps when it comes to blocking and filming scenes like that?
Michael Morris: I’ll tell you what – that is a connection no one has come to me with! Kingdom! On this whole world tour! I love that. I was so connected to that show. I recommend to anyone who hasn’t seen it, find it.
But it did teach me an awful lot. That’s such a visceral experience watching that show. It was something that taught me quite a lot about how you can access an emotional moment, as well as really kinetically moving that camera.
Thank you to Michael for his time, and to Universal Pictures for organising the interview. Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is in cinemas February 13.
