Power dynamic: fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) drops her coat in front of the beleaguered-but-irrepressibly-cute Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway). Photo Barry Wetcher. Courtesy 20th Century Fox.
Who knew that fiction could be the best revenge? But then, what better way is there to checkmate a loathsome boss than to reveal their dirty secrets in a chick-lit bestseller? In their 2003 novel The Nanny Diaries, former child minders Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus exposed the brittle, status-obsessed parents and nervous, lactose-intolerant toddlers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. A year later, Lauren Weisberger weighed in with The Devil Wears Prada, about the demonic editor of Runway, an influential fashion glossy, and her super-super-nice, oh-so-incorruptible assistant, Andy. Weisberger, who once worked for Anna Wintour, has repeatedly insisted that Miranda Priestly, the monstrously mean editor in the book, bears absolutely no resemblance to the real-life Vogue editor (nickname: Nuclear Wintour). Well, fine, whatever you have to tell the lawyers, honey.
At least Wintour doesn’t seem to be holding any grudges. She gave a preview screening of the film adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada one of her glacially cool nods of approval. And, really, if you’re going to be portrayed as a snarling bitch on screen, then let it be by the glorious silver fox Meryl Streep, dressed to the elevens and stealing every scene. Icy, manipulative and exacting, Streep gets every nuance of Miranda right, from her withering looks to the whisper-pitch of her dismissive conversation-ender, “that’s all.”
When Miranda gets her first glimpse of Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), a high-minded Northwestern grad who’d rather be interviewing at The New Yorker, she decimates the girl in three quick pronouncements: Andy doesn’t read Runway, she has never heard of Miranda and, eyeballing Andy’s off-the-rack blazer, she has “no style and no sense of fashion.” When Andy tries to defend her taste, Miranda cuts her off with a curt, “No, no. That’s not a question.”
Anne Hathaway conveys appreciation for her funky, non-Brokeback Mountain wardrobe. Photo Barry Wetcher. Courtesy 20th Century Fox.
Spunky Andy gets the job anyway, becoming Miranda’s second assistant. It’s a position, according to British snoot and first assistant Emily (a terrifically tart Emily Blunt from My Summer of Love), “that a million girls would kill for.” After one year at Runway, she’ll be able to get a job at any magazine in New York. But that depends on whether Andy can stick it out that long. Miranda turns out to be a barbed-wire boss, who murmurs rather than yells her impossible demands. “Get me the piece of paper I had in my hand yesterday morning,” is a typical request. And when Andy screws up, as punishment she’s sent on a fool’s mission to track down a copy of the next, as-yet unpublished Harry Potter novel for Miranda’s twin daughters. Meanwhile, the clackers – that’s what Andy calls her nasty colleagues, after the sound of their stilettos on the office’s marble floor – mock Andy’s frumpy wardrobe. And sharp-tongued fashion director Nigel (the superb and underrated Stanley Tucci) unkindly points out that she’s fat. Size zero is the new two, he tells her, while Andy’s size 6 “is the new 14.”
Their low-carb diet must be addling their vision, because under the Old Navy sweaters is a swan in the making. Hathaway’s mile-high legs, Bambi eyes and Julia Roberts smile make Andy an unlikely loser, but no matter. Before long, she has succumbed to the siren song of The Closet – an apartment sized trove of designer swag – and is transformed into a sleek Runway clacker herself. (Sex and the City stylist Patricia Fields conjured up the film’s wardrobe, which means it’s alternately to-die-for gorgeous and screechingly hideous.)
Though Hathaway seems to have left her Brokeback Mountain sass somewhere in Texas, she still manages to turn the head of Christian Thompson (Simon Baker), an implausibly roguish freelance writer (where’s the laptop-induced slouch and the aura of mild desperation?). That he remains interested even after she has sent him a boxload of her college newspaper clippings – including her “award-winning series on a janitors’ strike” – is a testament to Andy’s newfound hotness. Their flirtation is complicated by Andy’s puppyish, sous-chef boyfriend (Adrian Grenier from Entourage), who pouts his disapproval of Andy’s growing allegiance to Miranda and her values.
Trendsetters: Fashion director Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) and editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). Photo Barry Wetcher. Courtesy 20th Century Fox.
Director David Frankel, who worked on both Sex and the City and Entourage, keeps the pace light and even offers up a few genuine laughs. Still, it doesn’t take much courage to satirize the fashion industry for being shallow and setting unrealistic standards of beauty (gasp! really?), nor is Hollywood the most credible source of fingerpointing.
What’s more compelling is the film’s defence of fashion as a billion-dollar art form. As Miranda, Streep reveals a real feeling for the beauty of well-designed and well-made clothes, as well as a canny intelligence and authority that expands the book’s one-note villain into a complicated and even somewhat sympathetic flesh-and-blood character. As for Andy, she’s far too innocent to be believed. Is it really possible that a college journalism major would never have deigned to read Runway, a magazine that the film pretentiously trumpets as having published the likes of Jeffrey Toobin and Joan Didion?
Ultimately, this low-fat, sitcomy film doesn’t know whether it wants to send up the fashion industry or praise it. It’s kind of like a knock-off H&M outfit – fun but flimsy.
The Devil Wears Prada opens on June 30.
Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
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