The director of the new Bridget Jones film, Michael Morris, has responded to the debate surrounding the movie’s age-gap relationship.
The film is the fourth instalment of the popular franchise that became a cultural phenomenon when romantic comedy Bridget Jones's Diary was released in 2001.
After Jones was originated in a column written by The Independent columnist Helen Fielding, the film version became a box office smash and received an Oscar nomination for its leading actor Renée Zellweger.
New film Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, adapted from the final book released in 2013, follows Jones as she adjusts to the modern age, getting accustomed to the perils of technology, ghosting, and Netflix passwords. In it, she is involved in a romance with a much-younger lover – played by The White Lotus and One Day breakout Leo Woodall – following the loss of her husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth).
Since Woodall’s casting was announced, a debate has surfaced about age-gap relationships in film, fuelled by other titles released in the past year, including The Idea of You and Baby Girl. Zellweger herself defended Jones’s 22-year gap between the 51-year-old character and 29-year-old lover Roxster, describing it as “nothing new”.
Morris added his thoughts to the conversation while calling out the double standard in backlash to the portrayal of men and women in age-gap relationships on-screen.
“What we’re seeing is an erosion of an invisible wall that has meant that, for some reason in culture, we have traditionally been less interested in women over a certain age interacting with men [of a certain age],” he told The Independent.
“That should be nonsense, I think we can all agree, that should be absolutely nonsense. There should be no invisible wall stopping anything.”
He continued: “If we’re going to judge relationships at all, it should be on who they are and how they behave with each other. There should be nothing to say, ‘Oh it’s an older woman’.”
The director, whose last film To Leslie earned Andrea Riseborough a Leading Actress Oscar nomination, said he has always seen a part of himself in the “chaotic and imperfect” Bridget.
He commented on the favourable climate for female-led stories, and the timing of multiple age-gap romance films within a short period.
“It’s funny – we were making this film for a while and obviously the book came out a long time ago,” he said. “At the same time that this movie’s come out, coincidentally, there are a few other notable movies that are dealing in relationships that are not dissimilar age-wise.”
He added: “That’s amazing if that’s what’s happening. It’s too early for me to know if culture changes that way, but hopefully this will be one less thing that women have to worry about.”
Part of the fascination with the dynamic between Woodall and Zellweger came when paparazzi shots were released showing the pair together on set. Morris said the experience was an awkward one for the team working on the film.
“It was definitely a new one for me,” he said of the pictures. “We want to protect the audience. People are really excited to see [the film], and we’re really excited to share this chapter of Bridget.”
He added: “Part of us was like, ‘Ah do you need to publish that picture of them before the film?’ Because there are some pictures you don’t want out because they’re moments and we want people to let them have their moments.
“We went from: ‘How do we stop the pictures happening? Can we literally put something up?’ But paparazzi are really persistent and they know a lot more tricks than we know to stop them.
“Ultimately you reach a point of ‘Let it be – we’re gonna keep making the film, they’re going to get their pictures, and hopefully it will all be OK in the end.’”
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is in UK and Ireland cinemas on Thursday (13 February).
