Reading Report - Le diable s'habille en Prada

Reading Report « The Devil wears Prada »

I have chosen to talk about one of my favorite movie called « The Devil wears Prada » played with two actresses that I really appreciate: Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway.

To begin, « The Devil wears Prada » is an American comedy-drama produced by David Frankel in 2006. This movie is based on Lauren Weisberger’s novel written in 2003. To write this book, Lauren Weisberger was widely inspired by her own experience of Anna Wintour’s assistant, the famous editor-in-chief of Vogue US. However, she admitted that she has exaggerated Anna Wintour’s character. The entire cast of the movie is very rich : indeed, we can find famous actors like Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Adrian Grenier, Stanley Tucci or even more Simon Baker.

To summarize, Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) is a young journalist looking for a job. She is contacted by Elias-Clark, a company which publishes the famous New York magazine of fashion Runway. This magazine is managed by Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) who is looking for her second assistant. Miranda is considered as « one of the most influential women of the world ».

When Andrea goes to the premises of Runway, she realizes very quickly that she is very different from the others because of their clothing style and their state of mind. What Miranda, herself, and Emily (Emily Blunt), the first assistant, get her to understand that. And yet, Miranda finally decides to hire the young journalist and she’s always reminding her that « millions of girls would kill for this job ». At the beginning, Andrea stays true to herself, in other words, dressed in clothes of big-box store and not necessarily very fashionable. But, with the help of Nigel (Stanley Tucci), the Runway’s artistic director, whom she becomes friendly, she begins to succumb to the fashion’s dictate by wearing luxury’s clothes. This job is very complicated for Andrea because she is continuously under the orders of Miranda which gives her more and more difficult tasks with always the risk of being dismissed in case of failure.

Andrea is going grow apart from her friends and her relationship with her boyfriend Nate (Adrian Grenier) is very eventful because she spends more and more time at the office or to answer Miranda’s calls. But she resists because she knows that after being Miranda’s assistant for 1 year, all the doors will be opened to her.

Little by little, Andrea is going to be Miranda’s favorite assistant to the point that Miranda decides to take Andrea with her to the Fashion Week instead of Emily.

This movie has received good critics and has been really appreciated by the audience especially for Meryl Streep’s performance. It became a surprise on summer box office in the United States : it managed to reach 124,7 million dollars of receipts after 24 weeks being in cinemas. Furthermore, this movie has also been enormously successful abroad in particular France, Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom. « The Devil wears Prada » recorded 326,5 millions dollars of receipts in total worldwide.

« The Devil wears Prada » also won awards and especially in 2007, Meryl Streep received the Gloden Globes of the best actress in a comedy. The same year, it was nominated at the BAFTA and the Oscars.

Obviously, « The Devil wears Prada » is part of the notion of the seats and forms of power.

Firstly, in this movie, we can very clearly see Miranda’s portrait as a powerful, very wealthy and tyrannical woman. Indeed, this one makes the terror reign over its editorial staff. In the following extract, we can notice that when Miranda announces that she is at the bottom of the premises earlier than planned, it’s the total panic. When she arrives, everything must be perfect, not to be afraid of one of her unfriendly remarks. Throughout the movie, she seems impassive and never smiles except at the end when she meets Andrea. Her words are often hurtful and her look is haughty which strengthens an icy and devilish side of her character. What’s more, she never raises the voice but everybody respects her.

extract n°1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PjZAeiU7uM

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