Film adaptation from a gender perspective: Bridget Jones’s Diary

La obra de Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones´s Diary, es una de las 10 novelas que mejor reflejan la sociedad de finales del siglo XX, según un estudio llevado a cabo por el periódico The Guardian. El gran éxito de esta obra, tanto de la novela como de la película, se basa en el argumento y en técnicas narrativas que empleó Jane Austen. Dentro del género literario Chick Lit, analizaremos cómo los guionistas crearon una adaptación mediante intertextualidades que reflejan el discurso postfeminista y cuáles fueron las estrategias cinematográficas que utilizaron para la adaptación de la novela.According to a study presented by The Guardian, Bridget Jones´s Diary is one of the 10 novels which best reflects the society at the end of the 20th century. The great success of this novel, as well as the film, is due to the plot and to Jane Austen´s narrative techniques. We will discuss how the scriptwriters created an adaptation through general intertextualities that reveal its connection with the postfeminist discourse, which were the cinematographic strategies that they used for the adaptation of the novel. On the other hand, we will discuss about its author, Helen Fielding, who is one of the writers that best illustrates the situation of occidental women at the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century. She describes a woman who dares to talk about her daily problems openly, pulling apart the belief that personal problems have to be kept in the private sphere. She uses real language, even creating new words to give women their own voice; in fact, she is a pioneer in the literary genre called Chick Lit, about which we will discuss its varieties and components. The post-feminist movement will serve as a background to contextualize the novel and the movie. The protagonist, Bridget Jones, is overwhelmed by the expectations of the postfeminist ideals. Bridget Jones´s Diary depicts the postfeminist settings through different intertexts: Jane Austen´s novel and the TV adaptation, both taken to the big screen by the scriptwriters of this movie (Helen Fielding, Andrew Davis and Richard Curtis)