Mid-way through my screening of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the entire audience let out a collective squeal. If you’ve seen the fourquel, you can probably guess which scene it was: Leo Woodall had just dived into a pool in a crisp white button-up.
It’s a truly beautiful moment of cinema. Bridget is at a garden party. She is waiting for the arrival of her new boyfriend, Roxster (Woodall), a 29-year-old pretty boy and (checks notes) park ranger of some sort. A tiny dog “falls” into the water and happily starts swimming to the other side of the pool.
Seeing this “disaster”, Roxster, who has, it seems, arrived on the scene just in time, promptly dives in to “save” him. Time seems to stand still. The entire crowd of middle-aged party-goers stares on, their jaws practically on the floor. He emerges from the pool, dripping, his white shirt clinging to his body—everyone (audience in the cinema, audience on the screen) is mesmerized.
On one hand, this moment gives us all what we came to the cinema to see: Woodall being a total hottie. (Sorry to objectify him, but this is a big part of his task in this film. Even he knows it; as he recently told The Guardian, “I felt some pressure for that day [at the pool], because I knew that it was all about kind of being ogled.”) But on the other hand, this is a moment that goes way beyond offering up some eye candy for the girls and gays in the crowd—it’s a moment that has both historic cinematic roots and a deeper sociological meaning. Yes, really. Please hear me out.
First of all, putting a hot guy in a wet shirt is a very serious tradition in the romance genre. (I myself wrote about it for GQ a few years ago.) It was perhaps most famously done in the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. In a now infamous scene, Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy dives into a murky pond near his estate to let off some of that broody steam. When he emerges in nothing but a dripping white shirt and breeches, he is shocked to find Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle) touring his home. Cue some sexy stammering and averted eyes.
The romantic-lead-in-a-wet-shirt has since become something of a trope. Rain storms have appeared in countless period dramas (Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Jane Eyre, to name a few), while men have been sent diving into ponds or fountains in countless other on-screen romances (Princess Diaries 2, Love Actually, Bridgerton, and, of course, Bridget Jones 1 and 2).
The Bridget Jones team is, of course, all too aware that the latest wet-shirt scene with Woodall is an allusion to Firth’s moment in Pride and Prejudice, and to the countless other wet-shirt-clad romantic leads that followed.
The moment is, in one way, something of an ode to Bridget’s one-time love interest, Mark Darcy. Also played by Colin Firth, Mark Darcy was greatly inspired by the leading man of Pride and Prejudice—so it’s only fitting that Bridget gets a new love interest who has his own Mr. Darcy moment.
In Mad About the Boy, though, the wet-shirt moment is ultimately subverted. Instead of emerging from the pond and stammering something awkwardly to Bridget (that kind of withdrawn wooing is reserved for her real love interest, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mr. Wallaker), Roxter grins unabashedly and peels his shirt off without a second thought. The moment is both totally swoonworthy and kind of hilarious—after all, we’ve all seen the first Bridget Jones films and we’re all in on the wet-shirt joke.
But, dare I say it, the moment is more than merely hot and funny—by making a pointed nod to the trope of the dripping-wet male romantic lead, the film is actually making an important point.
If the first Bridget Jones film was about the stigma of being single in your thirties, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is about the stigma of being single—and trying to date—in your fifties. Back in the early 2000s, Bridget found herself ridiculed and pitied for being single and unmarried. It’s no wonder writer Helen Fielding was so inspired by Pride and Prejudice—evidently, the early aughts had more in common with Jane Austen’s time than we like to think.
Bridget, now in her fifties, once again finds herself single after Mark’s tragic death. And, once again, she finds herself the subject of judgement and ridicule from the smug marrieds in her life. It’s time she settled down with someone appropriate, they imply during a particularly awkward dinner party in the film’s opening moments.
Instead, Bridget finds herself attracted to a younger guy who just so happens to be super hot. And, shocking all of her friends and acquaintances, he likes her, too. The fact that a 50-something-year-old single mother like Bridget could get someone like Roxster is a shock to them all—even though it shouldn’t be. This brings us back to the pool moment: Not only are they swooning at his dive into the pool, they’re also aghast at the fact that he chose Bridget.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy does what the series has always done best—it proves there is no one “right” way to live or love as a woman, regardless of your age or your looks or whatever else it may be. So, yes, giving this version of Bridget a hot young hero who can pull off a classic wet-shirt moment? It’s actually kind of revolutionary.
