大象传媒

Beeban Kidron has had an eventful career. The daughter of a Marxist writer, she came to prominence directing the 大象传媒's acclaimed adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Hollywood beckoned, although both 1992's Used People (with Shirley MacLaine) and 1995's To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar failed to generate much laughter - despite the latter featuring Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes in drag. She's subsequently divided her time between film and TV, most recently directing Julie Walters in 大象传媒 four-parter Murder. Now she's serving up seconds for Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason.

The aim of any sequel is to duplicate the things that worked first-time round but bring something fresh to the mix. What was your approach?

There's always this feeling that if something's been very successful at the box office, you have to repeat that success. But I felt the harder task was to not disappoint people's love of the first Bridget movie. It had been very much taken to heart, so there was an emotional responsibility to deliver another good experience for the audience.

The thing we had going for us was that Helen [Fielding] had gone on and written The Edge Of Reason, which was a whole new book, and she provided the bulk of the situations that exist in the sequel - either directly or indirectly. You felt that the world and situations were already there. The job, in a way, was to make a whole 'new' movie, and a new viewer can come to The Edge Of Reason, watch it from beginning to end, and, although they miss a few jokes that are made at the expense of the first movie, they will have a complete film experience. The references that are made to the first movie are the same ones that are made to The Sound Of Music, James Bond, or to some of the other cultural experiences that we all have. It's more like using the first Bridget as a cultural marker than actually trying to reproduce it in a direct way.

Had you seen the first movie before you were offered the sequel?

I actually saw its premiere in London, and I roared like a drain and absolutely loved it. I think that [the first film's director] Sharon Maguire did a fantastic job. The thing about Bridget is that Helen did her newspaper column, then it became a book, then it became the movie, then it became another hit book, now it's another movie. It has this kind of zig-zag through different forms and different periods and people relate to this iconic character in different ways. If we are to believe the audiences who have seen it so far, one of the nice things about The Edge Of Reason is that Bridget is growing up; she's got a new problem which is a bit more of a grown-up problem. We laugh and we love her all over again, but actually it is like our own life. We have chapters.

Is it significant that both movies have been directed by women?

Complicated question. I do feel that there are things about Bridget that I did not need to be told because I was a woman. They just mainlined into me, and I didn't even consider it. But, I have to say quite forcefully, if you look at the history of cinema and you look at the incredible performances by women on subjects that are theoretically female-centred, many, many, many of them have been directed by men. It is not a proper logic to say that because Bridget's a woman and her issues are very gender-specific, it needs a woman to direct them. A, that logic leaves women directors in a bad place when it comes to an action movie, should they choose to do one; and B, if you look at a film like Vera Drake, which stars my very dear friend Imelda Staunton [and is] directed by another friend, Mike Leigh, who deals with the most female of all subjects - abortion - I have to say: I rest my case. You do not need to to be a woman to direct this.

In some ways you're a surprising choice to direct the sequel as it's not necessarily your kind of movie...

Yeah, but it sort of is. It's a very difficult thing trying to have a creative life that ends up being a creative life in the public eye. All of the things that I have done are a natural path for me. I think a lot of my work, stylistically, is less a trail and more a plait. When I did my own mad version of Cinderella with Kathleen Turner [in 2000] and Jane Birkin as this underground creature, it was another way of looking at issues of body, beauty, aspiration, and fantasy - like Bridget is. When I did my police drama [Murder], it was the least 'police drama' drama you have ever seen - with the incredible Julie Walters, who is an actress who has more in common with Ren茅e Zellweger than you could think of immediately; she is a woman who both has the empathy to be a vehicle for tragedy, but is also one of the great comic actors of her generation and is a comedian from her head to her toe. Just like Ren茅e.

The Daily Mail - god bless 'em - reviewed the film and gave it five stars, but the last line was: "If this is bourgeois filmmaking, let's have more of it." I was so amused by the idea that they had embraced this character and yet I'd say that, in this world of glamorous magazines, the perfect movie star and celebrity culture, Bridget Jones is almost subversive. She's almost the outsider, she's almost the anti-hero. People really identify with Bridget - not just a little bit but with their whole heart - because her reality and her failure is closer to how we all do in the world, and the comedy is that gap between aspiration and reality that we all struggle with.

With a studio movie such as this, are you trying to put some 'subversive' elements in for yourself?

I don't think it's as clear-cut as that. You do say a very few things to a great many people sometimes, and sometimes you say an awful lot to fewer. Sometimes you manage both. It is a very complicated business, shouting out in the cultural world - everybody's out there screaming, it's not like I'm a sole voice! What's hard sometimes is that commentators see you as someone with either a moral point of view or social stand, and there's a very heavy burden around your neck. They give you a responsibility beyond your decibels, if you like.

I did not treat Bridget differently from my other work. I made no other conscious compromises to the studio system. There were things in the movie that they felt uncomfortable about that actually - God bless them - I put in front of 'the public'. I said, "You've got to trust them, they understand metaphor, they understand we are not literally saying, 'You will have a lovely time if you take magic mushrooms'; they understand that marriage is a leit motif of Bridget, it's not that we're saying 'Marriage is the institution we must all pursue'; they understand the comedy of someone so losing sight of their relationship that they think their boyfriend has gone off with another woman who has no interest in him. They understand the symbolism of these things." There were conversations like that. When the cards come back from test screenings and people say, "Thank you for making a movie where not everyone is perfect"; "Thank you for being irreverent"; "Thank for you being politically incorrect" "Thank you for this movie that cuts the bull****" - that's what they write on these cards.

You were in a strange position as a director because you were the outsider with an established team of actors. Did you sense that you had to win them over when you first went on the set?

It's funny, because the one thing that happens to actors all the time is, every time they move onto another film, they have another director. So they're all very used to that. It's not like Hugh Grant did Bridget Jones 1 and then Bridget Jones 2 and, "Oh God, there's a new director!" Hugh Grant made a whole lot between those two in which he had a whole new relationship. That relationship, I think, gets established every time. It goes without saying that, if it had been a bad experience, it would have been very much compared to the first movie.

We do all leave our status at the door of the set, to a large degree, and deal with the job at hand. I think most movie stars - not all - were once actors, and I think that you can always appeal to that part of someone in their performance, because they also have aspiration, and if there's any way in which you can fulfil that - even by giving them a beautiful shot in which to do their best work - you're making a contribution that they require.

What have you learned from the experience?

You learn something from every film. I learned a lot of technical things; I had a huge pleasure making a big soundtrack; huge pleasure building a particular CGI shot in the middle of the movie in a way that CGI's not normally used (as a sustained emotional fantasy across all the houses of London). There was also a huge pleasure working on a film of this scale where things were possible as acts of imagination were fundable. I hugely enjoyed the actors, because part of the great inheritance of Bridget Jones was inheriting Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, and Ren茅e Zellweger. Each of those actors works in a very different way, each of them very much top of their game at the moment. Having, not so much that star power - because that matters more now that the movie comes out - but having that sort of creative energy, that pool of talent to draw your story from, is a huge privilege for a director. But I have worked with such a depth of good actors that, for me, it is the reason I bound out of bed at 5am, as opposed to putting the pillow back over my head when the alarm goes. I love it, and I loved Bridget for that reason.