LE MONDE'S OPINION – WORTH SEEING

Back in 2001, Bridget Jones hit the screens embodied by the charming Renée Zellweger. She had been single for a long time, was shy and awkward, neither ugly nor beautiful, and more fond of pajama parties than stiletto outings. This phenomenon began with the novel of the same name by British author Helen Fielding. Published in 1996, it launched a literary sub-genre, "chick lit," characterized by romances aimed at a female audience and sprinkled with tongue-in-cheek humor. The trend exploded in the 2000s.

Since then, there have been three more films, the last being the Sharon Maguire-directed Bridget Jones Baby, released a year before the #MeToo revolution. One might have thought that the figure of the single woman in search of her Prince Charming was now obsolete, or dissolved into that other, much murkier sub-genre known as dark romance: the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy (2015-2018) and, more recently, Babygirl (Halina Reijn, 2024), in which the sadomasochistic relationship proves a far more relevant model for interpreting female-male relationships.

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