A
film review by Roxana Hadadi for rogerebert.com on Dec. 24, 2020.
Bridgerton is a scintillating, but
somewhat shallow, Regency fantasy
As
a genre, romance is frequently described with the kind of dismissive words that
suggest a certain inherent, and often sexist, bias. Bodice-ripper isn’t so bad, but trashy
is, and the latter comes up quite often in critical analysis of projects that
dare to imagine their protagonists happy, in love, and having a lot of sex.
This point isn’t to suggest that all romance films are actually good - rest
assured that the Fifty Shades of Grey
trilogy will not be defended here - but to note that, like the romantic comedy,
the romance genre tends to be targeted toward female fans, and also tends to be
broadly derided. Is there some kind of connection there? Absolutely. And that’s
what makes assessing a project like Netflix’s Bridgerton, with its varying pleasures and failures, so tricky.
On
the one hand, the show’s juicier elements - the acrobatic sex, the whispered
gossip, the fights and backstabbing - populate some of the series’ most
exciting scenes. The ensemble cast tears into the witty one-liners and cutting
insults of creator Chris Van Dusen’s
adaptation of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton novels. The production and
costume designers amp up the world of privilege these characters occupy with
sprawling estates and opulent gardens, extravagant outfits of satin, tulle, and
velvet, and elaborate ball after elaborate ball, during which anachronistic choices
like Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next and Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy
are performed by the Vitamin String
Quartet. From both an aesthetic and erotic perspective, Bridgerton delivers. But where the show
falters is in carving paths forward for its characters that feel in any way
unique or singular. Instead, some of the storylines stretch out far longer than
their natural evolution, while others are hastily introduced and resolved in a
fraction of the time. The result is an inconsistently paced effort that
ultimately reveals itself as an entirely predictable Pride and Prejudice retread. Bridgerton
is amusing enough and will scratch a certain thirsty itch, but its themes about
love, marriage, and class aren’t quite as progressive as it would like to think.
Van
Dusen’s series transports us to a version of Regency-era England in 1813 that
is far more ethnically diverse than history actually allowed. In Bridgerton, the Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) with whom the king
fell in love is a Black woman, and his adoration of her paved the way for the
inclusion of other races other than only white people in proper British
society. But few families of any ethnic background can rival the powerful,
prestigious Bridgertons, whose eldest daughter Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) is set to make her society debut. She is everything
a desirable young woman should be - delicate, pretty, and slim; clever in
conversation and demure otherwise; kind to household staff, commoners, and
other elites alike; determined to be a good wife and mother - and the
Bridgertons have high hopes that she’ll do well during the upcoming season of
balls, parties, dinners, teas, and other events that allow for young men and
women to catch each other’s eyes, and their parents to work out the details of
their engagements. Although the Queen describing Daphne as flawless in her debut is a triumphant moment, younger Bridgerton
sister Eloise (Claudia Jessie)
correctly observes that the other 200 or so young women who also came out to
society that year now have a collective
adversary. What men will be left for them if they’re all off courting
Daphne?
But
things don’t go quite according to plan. The first issue is the arrival of the
beautiful and mysterious Marina Thompson (Ruby
Barker), a distant cousin of the tasteless,
tactless Featherington family, who are frenemies of the Bridgertons. At the
first ball of the season, Marina charms and enchants, while Daphne stumbles - literally.
Her bumping into the eligible bachelor Simon, Duke of Hastings (Rege-Jean Page), and their terse
conversation afterward, causes a stir. Mothers eager to get a member of the
landed gentry interested in their daughters are constantly watching, and any
misstep of Daphne’s could damage her marriage prospects. When Daphne realizes
that her overprotective older brother Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), now the viscount of the house after her father’s
death, is going to scare away any suitors whom he doesn’t consider promising,
and when she learns that Simon is utterly disinterested in marriage and wants
to get everyone off his back, the two of them hatch a plan. If Simon and Daphne
pretend to be courting, Daphne’s unavailability will renew male interest in
her, while Simon’s suggested affection for Daphne will dissuade female interest
in him. They can’t stand each other (she calls him a rake; he calls her desperate),
but each of them gets what they want - as long as the secretive Lady
Whistledown, who serves as the series’ narrator (voiced by Julie Andrews), doesn’t find out about the scheme and spill the
dirt in her rabidly consumed scandal sheet.
Of
course, if you’ve read any Jane Austen novel, or seen any romantic comedy from
the last 30 or so years (from Pretty
Woman through Easy A), you can
guess where this is going. Frustratingly, however, Bridgerton takes its sweet time getting there. About half the
season is devoted to characters dancing around each other rather than
proclaiming what they want, and after relationships are finally established,
major obstacles are then inserted into the lovers’ paths, only to be hastily
resolved. The inconsistent pacing makes for early episodes that drag and latter
installments that seem too rushed, in particular a subplot about whether the
purpose of marriage is love for its own sake, or children and familial legacy.
Those
are major questions that Bridgerton
tidily wraps up in about one episode’s time, sometimes with characters’
decision making taking place entirely off-screen, and the result is that
certain arcs end up shortchanged. What causes a young woman to break up with
one of the Bridgerton brothers after their prolonged, passionate affair? What
inspires the individual who is eventually revealed as Lady Whistledown? What
effect does the death of a patriarch have on a certain family? Bridgerton wants a little morsel of
story for nearly everyone (except for the household staff members, maids,
housekeepers, cooks, and servants, who are universally devoted, loyal, and
perfectly happy serving all these rich people), which is admirable. But some
characters get such scraps that it almost seems like a disservice to have made
the attempt at all. And some of the series’ greatest shortcomings are how inconsistently
it addresses the model minority
pressure placed upon the characters who were elevated upward as a result of
Charlotte marrying into the royal family, and how little attention it pays to
Charlotte herself as a Black woman attempting to rule a country alone, rather
than just serving as the ailing king’s wife.
Still,
the cast is game for pretty much anything, and their willingness to throw
themselves into numerous outsized declarations of love and a staggering array
of energetic sex scenes (which last longer than you would expect, and are
appreciably egalitarian in their focus on both male and female pleasure) sells
a lot of this. Dynevor and Page have solid chemistry, and they convey the
transforming feelings of the central couple. Their pivot into increasingly
sexual flirtation, including a conversation about masturbation, is abrupt, but
pays off with a callback later on. Also wonderful are Nicola Coughlan as the brainy Featherington daughter Penelope,
whose close friendship with Eloise has been forged over years of rolling their
eyes at their families’ antics, and Adjoa
Andoh as Lady Danbury, a mother figure for Simon who can pull strings with
the best of them. The flashbacks focusing on her tutelage of a young Simon
allow the actress to display both steeliness and tenderness; Andoh’s
performance is the most multifaceted performance of the whole show. Austenites
will rejoice at scenes where one character gently pulls off another’s gloves or
undoes the many tiny buttons of her undergarments, and when a declaration of
love is given during a thunderstorm. And some of the series’ funniest moments arise
from a self-aware cheekiness at the absurdity of this world: Anthony’s steward
diverting his horse’s gaze from Anthony having sex with a woman up against a
tree; one of the Featherington daughters fainting before Queen Charlotte
because of a too-tight corset; Portia Featherington (Polly Walker) snapping at her daughter Penelope to put down a book
lest it confuse your thoughts, and her husband, Lord Featherington (Ben Miller) for gambling away their wealth. More
of that irreverence would have served Bridgerton
well, instead of three separate episodes during which Daphne and Eloise
struggle to understand what sex is and how women become pregnant. That thematic
bludgeoning isn’t the show’s strong suit.
The
primary issue, though, is that Bridgerton
is most interested in maintaining a specific heterosexual woman’s fantasy, and
will shuffle past legitimate concerns raised by its very narrative to maintain
that dream. There is a formula for joy in Bridgerton,
and the show never really strays from those beats: buck tradition and find a love match instead of an arranged
marriage; be relieved to find that the man in question is fabulously wealthy;
have immediately perfect and flawlessly exceptional sex; step up as a
protective matriarch while maintaining your attractiveness and sexual
desirability; live happily ever after. That soothing familiarity makes for
pleasant viewing, but boring viewing, too. I
am going to be a princess! Daphne exclaims at one point, her pouty
proclamation complete with a foot stomp. Bridgerton
is best when it services the scintillating elements of this story rather than
the self-satisfied part.
Blogger’s
comments: I must admit that I enjoyed Season 1 of Bridgertonas a delicious satire. The lily-white Court of St. James, from Queen Elizabeth on down,
must be as horrified as Harry and Meghan are amused.
Labels:
drama, Netflix, period, romance, satire
IMDb 73/100
MetaScore (critics=73, viewers=54)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=87, viewers=72)
Netflix
Roxana Hadadi’s published review
Lady Whistledown's guide to Bridgerton
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