Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy – embracing the chaos of grief.

This post will contain spoilers of Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy.

Bridget Jones has always been a comfort watch, whether you’re navigating your 20s, heartbreak or dating. Bridget Jones has always been relatable, funny, a bit chaotic and a bit like a big sister. In the new film we see Bridget in the aftermath of losing her husband, and father to her two children, Mark Darcy, as well as her own father. 

The film perfectly captures the confusion that comes with grief but also layers it with humour. The film starts with Bridget going to an annual dinner party to celebrate Mark’s birthday and plays on the well-meaning but often strange things people say when you’re grieving. People often struggle to know what to say, as Bridget describes it perfectly with “even though there might be 600,000 words in the human language, the world still struggles to find the right ones when someone you love is gone.” 

“Thing about advice, no one tells you the same thing twice” 

Sadly, many of us can probably relate to the ‘well-meaning advice’, like ‘he/she would’ve wanted you to be happy’. Bridget Jones highlights how strange this can be when everyone is giving you all kinds of different advice, when really there are no solutions. 

“What if I forget him?” 

The standout part of the film is the overarching theme of being scared to leave your person behind, but also realising you never really do. We see Bridget battle with dating again after loss, which I thought would’ve been the main take home of the film but, actually, it was seeing her children struggle with forgetting their father. The film shows her son, William, come to terms with the loss of his father and the fact he is scared to forget him.

Although the film only touches on certain aspects of this, like him withdrawing at school, and it is mainly through the lens of Bridget, we see the ways that grief at a young age really impacts you. It is heartwarming to see the growth in William’s character throughout the film, going from being quiet and almost isolated, to singing his father’s favourite song at a Christmas show. It really shows how you grow around your grief, while also highlighting that it is not a linear journey. We see all of the family dealing with different waves of grief at different key moments, like Christmas, birthdays or just times when they miss their dad.

As a young person, it’s hard to think that you have so many experiences without them. But the film perfectly shows that they are always with you, in your memories, traditions and even how you are as a person. Bridget rightly puts it as “But you see that you can live with all the things you’ve lost and be happy.”  A much needed reminder that guilt and sadness is not a real indicator of how much you miss your person.

The film isn’t a perfect depiction of grief as a young person, but it does highlight a lot of the complexities and the chaos of it all. It’s important to see grief and loss being discussed in the media and hopefully the film's success will help the conversation become less of a taboo.