The Devil Wears Prada


Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"


Peter Bradshaw
Friday October 6, 2006
The Guardian

"Flattire" is a newish word which describes an ersatz satire which actually celebrates and defers to that which it is supposed to be sending up. Watching this moderately entertaining film about fashion, I wondered what further word you'd need for flattire with the satire removed. Perhaps "flattery" covers it.
Meryl Streep plays Miranda Priestly, the super-scary New York fashion editor with the appropriately adverbial surname. She is of course similar to American Vogue's legendary Anna Wintour, although Priestly wears her dark glasses outdoors only. On the principle that servants are like lovers - if you want to keep them, you must treat them badly - Miranda has an emotional S&M relationship with the staff and the S is her prerogative; she bullies and humiliates them and they worship her in return.
Enter Andy (Anne Hathaway) a goofy young provincial woman with good grades and bad clothes, hailing from Ohio, one of what the fashion world calls the "flyover states"; she's applying for a job as a stopgap before she becomes a real writer. From some unfathomably cruel caprice, Miranda decides to hire the terrified Andy as her assistant, who feels she must get the hang of fashion or die of shame. Gradually, Andy becomes more stylish, more beautiful, more hooked on the drug of high fashion, more slavishly adoring of Miranda. Is she (gulp!) turning into Miranda?
Inevitably, like so many other books and movies about the seductions of the big city, The Devil Wears Prada wants to have its non-fat, vegan cake and eat it. It wants to hitch a free ride on all the high-speed excitement of the wicked fashion biz - before finally growing up and deciding it's way too superficial. Andy winds up being scared by how badly she's behaving, though of course she never does anything really bad.
Streep is undoubtedly a good turn in the dragon lady role, especially at the very beginning, interrogating Andy in a chillingly light voice with a misleadingly upward inflection. "And you want a job here, despite having no personal sense of fashion or style ...?" "Well, I think that's a matter of -" "It is not a question."
When Streep is absent from the screen, however, the interest factor plummets. Stanley Tucci plays the obligatory Bald Gay Male Confidant figure (Willie Garson did it in Sex and the City). He does his best. The real disappointment is Emily Blunt as the Brit bitch who works opposite Andy: the one actor here who really does look as if she could work in fashion. But she is strained and awkward and has none of the drop-dead-sexy hauteur she showed us in My Summer of Love. Embarrassingly, she is made to say "loo" to show off some real limeyspeak. Perhaps she can be grateful she wasn't given bad teeth.
Then of course there are cameos for real-life fashion stars coming on woodenly as Themselves, and that is always, always the kiss of death. Real fashionistas, however stylish, are a boulder-sized lump of Kryptonite for comedy - here, as in Altman's 1994 fashion film Prêt-à-Porter. In fact the film has a couple of all-too-serious speeches about how important fashion actually is, thank you so much. Now, I'll be the first to admit I don't "get" fashion, but to intimate its ephemeral pleasures to the non-believer and non-understander, I think you'd need a more astringent and detached - and a funnier - movie than this.

astringent- uszczypliwy, cierpki
cameo- perełka aktorska
defer- odkładać, przekładać; opóźniać; ustępować
detached- bezstronny, obiektywny
ephemeral- efemeryczny, przelotny
fashionista- entuzjasta mody, fanatyk mody (pogardliwie)
flyover- wiadukt
goofy- głupi; śmieszny
hail from- pochodzić z
hauteur- wyniosłość
hook on- złapać się na haczyk
inevitably- nieuchronnie
inflection- załamanie głosu
interrogate- zadawać pytania, przesłuchiwać
intimate- dawać do zrozumienia
limeyspeak- wymowa angielska (pogardliwie)
plummet- spadać (gwałtownie)
prerogative- przywilej, prawo, prerogatywa
S&M- sadomasochistic; sadomasochistyczny
seduction- uwiedzenie
slavishly- bałwochwalczo, niewolniczo
stopgap- tymczasowe rozwiązanie, prowizorka, namiastka
strained- napięty, spięty
unfathomably- nie do zbadania, nie do zgłębienia
wind up- niepokoić; kończyć
worship- czcić


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