The staggeringly vapid world of haute couture must be one of the few real environments populated by such caricatures that it's virtually impossible to satirise. Any successful attempt to do so must therefore go straight for the jugular, and under no circumstances be in love with its subject. Since the director of this piece of fluff has impeccable credentials in purveying feelgood materialist porn for girlies from Sex and the City, no less, there's little point in expecting anything more here than a few safe social observations on decency judiciously sprinkled on the gloss and grotesques, and The Devil Wears Prada certainly doesn't disappoint on that front. Anne Hathaway's perennially cute outsider to the fashion industry may rail at first and at the last against the superficiality of the business, but also gets to go to the best dos and wear an unfeasible number of nice outfits to boot, and is clearly happier for it.
Meanwhile Meryl Streep, as her vitriolic boss, phones in one of her haughty soulless harridans, a performance of undeniable fun but no depth. It's becoming hard to remember when Streep was actually called on to work in a role (Silkwood?).
Overall, the cake is had and eaten and no harm done to the real fashionistas, who turn up in their droves in cameos. It's all very much in the vein of the Hollywood indictments of prejudice against the poor which only ever end happily once the heroes have become astoundingly rich.
4/10
2 comments:
If you'd seen any of Meryl Streep's interviews re: DWP, you'd notice that in response to, "You must have had fun playing such a b*tch!" she always said that she wished she had seen it that way, but was too aware of the sacrifices the character had made in her life and her hidden pain, and didn't even have fun on set because she stayed in character while at work. Most critics actually marveled at how she was able to create a multidimensional character out of one that could be so ordinary.
As a side note, Silkwood is undeniably one of her absolute best performances (in my personal top 4 list for her) and rather underrated. Flawless.
You have a personal Meryl Streep top 4 performance list. This worries me quite a bit.
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