The Devil Wears Prada

Synopsis: The Bible of New York fashion is Runway magazine, its Deity is Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep), the magazine's Editor-in Chief. Miranda is looking for a new assitant and young journalism graduate Andy (Anne Hathaway) gets the job. Andy's smart but she doesn't know Galliano from Gucci. Will she survive?

The Devil Wears Prada which is based on a best-selling novel by Lauren Weisberger, is a slick package in the cake-and-eat-too tradition that at once is a fashionista’s roll-call of in-your-dreams designer brands and a scathing satire of the narcissistic hermeticism of high fashion. At times, particularly in the film’s first half to know which aspect director David Frankel whose work has all been in television (including episodes of the monster hit series, Sex and the City), has his money on is not easy.

The main reason for this is that whilst the film is a persuasive simulation of the vanity and ruthlessness of the corporatized world of fashion publishing with fabulous performances by Meryl Streep, as the imperious editor-in-chief (who has, with good reason, been compared to real-life Vogue boss Anna Wintour, Emily Blunt as her bitchily insecure, slavishly-devoted lackey and Stanley Tucci as her world-weary, archly gay, well I don’t know what he does but he’s some kind of haute couture maven, Anne Hathaway’s Andy is a hollow invention.

The narrative depends on Andy’s “outsider” sensibility. She’s supposed to be a smart, liberal thinking young woman who only applies for the job as Miranda’s assistant because she can’t land the kind of work she really wants to do, writing about current social and political issues. That on a counter-intuitive impulse Miranda gives her the job is OK but Andy’s subsequent complete identification with Miranda’s expectations (even to the point of dieting) for her Is given no justification. We can posit some kind of compulsive need to please but the film-makers don’t even try to help us. The result is that Andy gets to wear some fabulous outfits as she moves into Miranda’s circle of trust, in the process forsaking her boyfriend (Adrian Grenier) and hooking up with a freelance writer she admires (a ridiculously mis-cast Simon Baker). Whilst this will appeal to the Sex and The City crowd Andy’s wholesale subsumption to a woman who is borderline psychopathic is unsatisfying to say the least.  Eventually she pulls out of it and the story wraps with a tidy happy-ending, one that will disappoint fashion junkies and leave more thoughtful viewers unconvinced

With its tidily choreographed dance of typological characters The Devil Wears Prada is reminiscent of "single working girl" comedies of the '30s and '40s, the sort of thing that would have starred Ginger Rogers or Rita Hayworth . It’s well-put-together and as long as you’re in the mood for some Hollywood-Lite, it's entertaining enough.

FYI; Those interested can compare Anna Wintour in action in the 2009 documentary, The September Issue,

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