Less glossy

By Joseph L. Garcia, Senior Reporter

Movie Review
The Devil Wears Prada 2
Directed by David Frankel

WHEN The Devil Wears Prada came out in 2006, it was the peak of a silver age of magazine publishing. The busy, bridge-burning life cushioned by freebies and proximity to power wasn’t only aspirational — to some people, it was real. In the same chunk of time (the late 2000s to the early 2010s, right before the explosion of social media that changed all our lives), documentaries that were an answer to The Devil Wears Prada purported to show the reality behind the movie, and sold that life as something we should all want. “Don’t be ridiculous, Andrea. Everybody wants this. Everybody wants to be us,” Miranda (the most powerful fashion editor of her day, played by Meryl Streep) told Andy (the newbie who was all of us played by Anne Hathaway).

Twenty years have passed since this exchange, and it’s laughable now how… well, who wants to be us? A cousin once looked me in the eye at dinner, he who worked in influencer marketing, and told me, “But print is dead.” (Of course, the movie’s Runway magazine and my own career are separated by several layers of power and the veil of reality, but you get my point.)

This is the changing media landscape that both Andy and Miranda now have to face in The Devil Wears Prada 2, which we saw this week through a special screening by Globe. Andy is now a respected journalist in her own right, and Miranda is holding on to her power by just her nails. The first movie opens with Andy brushing her teeth to KT Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See,” the friendly guitar strumming reflecting the innocence of both Andy, and the times. Now, this second movie opens with Dua Lipa’s “End of An Era” (but still with Andy brushing her teeth) — and that basically signals the movie’s plot.

Andy wins an award in journalism, and in a beat, her whole team loses their jobs due to corporate layoffs. On the other end of the spectrum, Miranda places her trust in a fast fashion company that turns out to rely on sweatshop labor, and thus becomes fodder for the social media mob’s “cancellation” (a concept unknown in the years of the first movie). Andy is hired by Runway (bypassing Miranda) to solve this morality problem (thus making a statement on how business now has to run on some sort of scale of purity). The rest of the film shows this: how the lives of several people in publishing, living their dream, are hinged on finance, corporate decisions, and website hits.

Emily (the first movie’s witty assistant played by Emily Blunt) got off the boat before it started sinking: she plays a supporting role as a fashion executive with whom Miranda now needs to bargain with in order to save the publication. Nigel, Miranda’s right hand, is played still by Stanley Tucci, helping Miranda navigate through the humiliations of her reduced power (no more silver Benzes, just Ubers; no more private jets, just seats in coach).

Emily works for Dior — named in the movie, something we mention because in the first movie, designers were afraid to be in the film for fear of retribution from Vogue editor Anna Wintour, supposedly the inspiration for Miranda Priestly (the book the movie was based on was written by one of her many former assistants, Lauren Weisberger). In the cover story for this month’s Vogue, Ms. Wintour appears next to her film incarnation, Ms. Streep in costume as Miranda — so we guess she’s given her cool assent to the film. In the interview for the cover, Ms. Streep said, “Well, everybody was afraid of Anna on the first one, so we couldn’t find any clothes. Nobody would give us any clothes.” This silent assent has given the film so much: it allowed more designers and celebrities to make cameos — Donatella Versace, Marc Jacobs, Lady Gaga, even; but then, also one of the Bush daughters.

The fashion is of course, on point: we saw Chanel, Dior, maybe vintage Halston. The clothes do seem less “real” though: the fashion in the first film could sometimes border on the ridiculous, but maybe because of increased support from designers in the new film, everybody seemed a little too dressed up for day jobs. Still, while it chips away at realism, it helps sell the fantasy.

The movie is shot with less care compared to the first one, perhaps a sign of this period’s more frenetic eye. For example: a sequence with Lady Gaga performing at a fashion show, which should be one of the splashiest scenes, left the eye focusing on nothing and everything. Several scenes where the camera should linger saw quick, confusing pacing.

The acting — well, there’s a reason why they’re all there for the sequel. They’ve only gotten better, 20 years since.

There are several laughs in the movie — while we’re supposed to sympathize with poor Miranda losing her power, we laugh at her retorts that have to be shushed by her assistant in the age of smartphones. “What can’t I say? Methadone?” Emily is still as cracking smart as a whip, and even in another language: in one of her scenes, she shouts at Donatella Versace in a restaurant in angry, fluent Italian.

We do note, however, that there are less iconic scenes in this movie. No cerulean speech (though the sweater is seen in the movie), no coat-flinging sequence (Miranda has to hang up her own coat, as a gag to her reduced circumstances); hardly anything. There were attempts by both Ms. Streep and Ms. Blunt to have monologues as enduring as in the first one, but they just don’t land the same way.

Perhaps the emotional resonance with the film can only come to someone who has lived that life — and in these times, how many can those be? Oddly enough, our closest parallel is the Queen Mother from The Crown complaining about having to meet commoners in S2E5. “Small wonder we make such a fuss about curtsies, protocol, and precedent. It’s all we have left. The last scraps of armor as we go from ruling, to reigning… to being nothing at all.”

It’s still a great movie to watch though — it’s a great snapshot of what we’ve gained and lost in those 20 years. My seatmate during the movie said, “That’s not a warning. It’s already happened.”