Cinema - The Devil Wears Prada

After Laura Weisberger spent a season as an intern on Vogue Magazine, under the infamously icy Anna ‘Nuclear’ Wintour, she decided to give voice to her resentment (with a suitable disclaimer), in the form of the 2003 novel, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. A heartfelt indictment of the master/slave dialectic in easily digestible designer form, the book was a hit, and it was not long before it was being negotiated for a filmic make-over. This year has seen the release of the result with Meryl Streep as Wintour’s thinly-veiled double, Miranda Priestly and the unconvincingly drab Anne Hathaway, cast as Weisberger’s character, Andrea Sachs.

If the content of our TV schedules are to be believed, there is nothing the public likes more than an aggressive display of power. More so when the victim is female, and better still when the perpetrator is too (it has a suitable girl-on-girl fetishistic appeal). So plot of this film doesn’t come as too much of a surprise: a young girl gets used and abused by the fashion industry, learns to assimilate (briefly intoxicated by free access to designer clothing) and finally makes a bid for freedom, integrity intact. It’s little surprise, either, that the film has been greeted with healthy box-office sales. But what is it really saying about the fashion industry? While Weisberger’s novel firmly comes down on the side of humanity over unchecked egotism, the movie version tends to opt for (Patricia ‘Sex and the City’ Field’s) style over substance. ER