The Devil Wears Prada - Sic Semper Tyrannis



The Devil Wears Prada. Directed by David Frankel. Starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci (and whatever they paid him to mince and sashay and prance around in those awful outfits… it wasn’t enough).

[Note: The guy who usually reviews these flicks didn’t do this one on account of he was afraid it could cost him his life membership in the Eighty-Second Airborne Division Association to get caught sneaking in to see it. Instead, he was out with a grease gun adjusting track on his John Deere 450C (made in the U.S. of A.) while drinking domestic beer (flockin’ furriners) right outten the bottle in company of his Pitt bull (Patton had one), Shiv. Onliest thing he knows about clothes is that if Carhardt don’t make it, men don’t wear it.]

Anne Hathaway? Ann hath a way…? Isn’t she Shakespeare’s wife? Second-best bed…?

Anyhow. Doesn’t matter. This movie is about Meryl Streep and can she pull off bitch? Does a cat have a whoozis? The rest is just celluloid. Streep in this diva-performance joins the ranks of great cinee-mah bitch-goddesses: Elizabeth Taylor from “Who’s Afraid”; Joan Allen from “Upside of Anger”; Angela Lansbury from “Manchurian”; Ingrid Bergman from “Casablanca” (picked the Euro-weenie instead of Rick… oh, yeah, and the flight to America). Actually, in case you miss it, you dummy, Streep plays Miranda Priestly, and though I doubt the chippie who wrote the original tell-all on Anna Wintour (fashion maven sommeres in the Emerald City) knew that “miranda” is the Latin plusperfect putative perispastic for “look at me,” it’s clearly as high “priest”-ess of a dark but sacred precinct to which hierophants address themselves on all fours—and vestal, maybe, yet anything but virginal—that Miranda holds sway. Streep does have this stuff down and just may have cemented her position as reigning ac-trice in America with this bravura (Latin for “fifty-something and still got cheekbones”) outing. As Streep does her thrusting, assertive man-woman, Tucci (guy might look into getting representation) does his caricature of sissy, lapdog woman-man, so we have a push-me-pull-you, role-reversal, androgenerous, hermaphrodromedary doowop here you can write your doctoral dissertation on.

Goes like this. Ingénue (French for “Mid-West”) Andrea Sachs (Hathaway), a baggy sweater, socks-don’t-match, squash-heel-pumps wanna-be journalist washed up in the beau monde (French for “New York”), snags from out of nowhere an interview to take the place of the umpteenth administrative assistant in a month run off by dragon lady Miranda Priestly. She shows up in despair of her chances just as the Medusa storms into the office, scattering homunculi and hermunculi left and right. Fresh but determined, Andie (as she calls herself though Miranda insists on “Andrea”) makes a hit , gets the job. And that’s the story. A fashion refusnik, Andie slowly allows herself to be draped by femme-lin Nigel (Tucci), a devoted catechumen in the Church of Miranda who’s persuaded himself that his society piety will someday fetch him a reward (what he really needs is a pair of umph umphs, but hey…) in the newest, the hottest, the chic-est and turnt into a pouty lips, high cheekbones, tight gaucho pants—moiré over a whisper of tulle cinched with a cute little faux lapin bodice in mint ecru heather—mannequin despite herself… as despite herself, she enjoys her new self… as despite herself Miranda comes to admire the competence and independence of her new amanuensis.

Can’t go on, of course. Fashion is about looks while the Mid-West, as we all know, is about stuff. Sooner or later Andrea will come back down to earth and Miranda levitate back off it. But first—and for our enlightenment, us dummies—that differential between the ur-real and the purr-real (between I’m slinky, assume I’m nice and I’m sloppy, assume I’m deep) will cost Andrea her sinuous lips, third-World, third-day bearded gourmet chef boyfriend, Bocci (or something.. oh, yeah, and she’ll spurn the white-teeth, blondie stud glitteratus like that’d happen: for Pete’s sake, I’d date that guy…), and Miranda her pleated trousers, razor-cut, tassle-loafered fop of an arbitrageur (French for “longterm municipal debentures”) husband. One scary scene: Miranda—sans makeup, ashen, red-eyed, and cadaverous—sits stung, solitary but still Miranda as her bitchitude takes its predictable toll on her domestosity, soul stripped as bare of human as her cheeks of pancake. Brrrrr… One terrific scene: Miranda delivers a Paddy Chayefsky caliber tirade to little Andie on the futile arrogance of the unfashionable who even in their defiance of mode with its transparent invitation to think of them as heavy yield in the end to the insistent and insinuating force of This Season. Almost redeems the film right there: can’t embrace Fashion, can’t not embrace Fashion. “They all,” hisses Miranda, as she hoists herself out of one more limo into one more barrage of lights up one more red carpet, “They all want to live like us.” They, I guess, is us.

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