By Yasmin Jeffery for The Screen Show, ABC Entertainment
Bridget Jones (right) has been trying and failing to deal with the loss of Mr Darcy (left) for four years at the beginning of Mad About the Boy. Photo: Supplied / Universal Pictures
The Bridget Jones we meet in the cult franchise's fourth and final film is the one we fell in love with when Renée Zellweger first brought her to our screens 24 years ago.
But at the same time, she isn't.
How could she be, when Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) was killed in a landmine accident in Sudan four years ago, leaving Bridget a widowed mother-of-two who's still struggling to deal with her loss? (This isn't a spoiler, but the entire premise of the new film, which is based on the 2013 book by Bridget Jones's creator, Helen Fielding.)
Zellweger thinks a shift was as necessary to the continuation of Bridget's story as the beloved Mr Darcy's death.
"With each of the films with Bridget, it's a reintroduction, she's at a different stage and she's learning different things," Zellweger tells ABC RN's The Screen Show.
"She's a mother, and she's grieving, you're never the same person in the different chapters of your life [and] you're never the same on the other side of a loss.
"It changes who you are, it changes your values, your perspective. And what hangs in the balance of the decisions she's making is so significant now because it's not just about her - it's about these children as well."
While Bridget is still achingly vulnerable, suffers from the same self-deprecating inner dialogue and remains an entirely transparent agent of chaos, she doesn't obsess over things like her weight or drinking in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.
She still wonders whether she's good enough and compares herself to the other mothers at school drop-off, but now spends more time exploring "the challenging pieces of life", as Zellweger puts it, so that she can answer a new set of questions.
Namely: how to move on in life and love after losing one's person, while being a good mother and retaining a sense of identity.
The camera is alone with her in a way it's never been before. And there's not a love triangle or fight scene to be seen.
The result is a film that feels markedly different, both in style and tone, to the sort of Bridget Jones movie we're used to.
Forget the rom-com - Mad About the Boy is a 'comedy of grief'
Mad About the Boy still has plenty of rom-com elements to it: in Bridget's early attempts to re-enter the dating scene, a friend signs her up to Tinder as a "tragic widow seek[ing] sexual reawakening".
She soon matches with a 29-year-old "tree-rescuing Adonis" inexplicably named Roxster (Leo Woodall), swiftly learns about ghosting first-hand and messes with her lips, inflating them to disastrous levels.
Leo Woodall pays homage to Hugh Grant's wet shirt moment in the 2004 Bridget Jones movie, which in turn referenced Colin Firth's infamous lake scene in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice adaptation. Photo: Supplied / Universal Pictures
She spars endlessly with her primary-school-aged son's new, ridiculously attractive science teacher/Mr Darcy proxy, Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
And Hugh Grant somehow gives his funniest ever performance as the aging womaniser, Daniel Cleaver, who hasn't let his new-found need to wear compression socks stop him from pursuing 20-something models.
But director Michael Morris (the first man to direct a Bridget Jones film) says Mad About the Boy would be more aptly described as a "comedy of grief" than a rom-com proper.
Off the back of his stint producing and directing the second and third seasons of 13 Reasons Why, Morris saw Bridget Jones as the perfect vehicle to explore loss through the context of comedy as opposed to drama, which he - and Zellweger - think we need more of.
Bridget and Mr Wallaker's relationship is full of friction - at one point the word is emblazoned across the blackboard in his classroom behind them. Photo: Supplied / Universal Pictures
"Renée has always been the leading voice to say we shouldn't do a Bridget Jones film just because we can, especially if it's the last chapter. You want to do one because there's a really compelling story to tell," he says.
"Comedy is a way of getting intimate with a character, and Bridget [comes with] an extra layer of intimacy because we've known her for so long, and I think it's instructive to see how someone so joyful handles something so difficult."
He says there's "something universal" in the way everyone makes the same mistakes handling their grief.
"We all just do the best we can, and we need the help of our friends and family to give us the strength to finally rediscover joy and life when the time is right, [without] moving away from the [person] we've lost."
Renée Zellweger says the decisions Bridget must make in Mad About the Boy feel more significant "because it's not just about her, it's about these children as well". Photo: Supplied / Universal Pictures
The love-triangle departure and age-gap romance
Mr Darcy's death feels like an impossible thing to get over at the outset of Mad About the Boy, for audience members as much as Bridget herself.
But the aforementioned significantly younger Adonis and curiously ripped primary school science teacher make it shamefully fast and easy, adding unabashed horniness to this poignant meditation on grief in a way that somehow feels not only natural, but entirely necessary.
In some ways, Mad About the Boy feels like the latest in a string of movies attempting to destigmatise age-gap relationships featuring older women and younger men - think The Idea of You, A Family Affair and Babygirl.
But even as the younger man, Woodall doesn't think Mad About the Boy is trying to say that much about age-gap relationships.
"I think it's talking more about what Bridget herself is going through, which is grief and motherhood and wanting to get more joy back in her life," he says.
Morris agrees, saying that while Bridget and Roxster's relationship features age-related tension at the beginning, their problems are not because they live in "different worlds".
"It's really a product of his fear and insecurity. And whether they're ultimately right for each other isn't only pegged on her age … it's more about timing and where they are in their lives."
Will Bridget and Roxster end up together? Or will the different life stages they're in get in the way? Photo: Supplied / Universal Pictures
(Although Morris does hope Mad About the Boy adds something to the age-gap romance discourse: "I'm not that wide-eyed [to think] a movie can change the world … but I do think a bunch of movies coming out at the same time can start a conversation that's had in the press and then in living rooms and in restaurants, and that those conversations can change attitudes.")
As Bridget and Roxster attempt to figure out what they want from each other, Mr Wallaker undergoes a separate transformation on the sidelines.
Ejiofor says the part was a "rollercoaster" to embody: "[Mr Wallaker] is very buttoned-up to begin with and that's fun to play, but then something really intriguing happens…"
Longtime fans of the series will have likely guessed how the story ends: we know Bridget - even if the Bridget Jones we were introduced to more than two decades ago is dead.
"It's an inevitability, isn't it? Society evolves and so does the girl," Zellweger says.
Long live this version of Bridget Jones.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is in cinemas from February 13.
- ABC
