Daily Blague

Kathleen asked me to wait to see The Devil Wears Prada until she could see it, too, but given my busy days lately - Thursday was the only day in the week that went at all normally - there was no sacrifice in the postponement. We saw Devil on Friday at the unearthly hour of ten o'clock. That there was even a nine o'clock showing is a testament to New Yorkers' passionate devotion either to celebrity tell-alls with a fashionista accent or to Meryl Streep, or to both. Aline Brosh McKenna's screenplay and Peter Frankel's direction have transformed what I understand is a one-dimensional piece of pulpy chick lit into a glamorous dream of New York - and what are the movies for, if not glamorous dreams of New York? So effective was The Devil Wears Prada that I was embarrassed to walk out of the theatre in my madras shirt and shorts. I wouldn't have been welcome in any of the movie's more exalted precincts.

Everybody says that Meryl Streep walks away with the movie, but that's not true. It would be better to say that she presides, in the manner of a Delphic oracle, over the growth and development of Anne Hathaway's character, Andy Sachs. Ms Hathaway makes hay out of Andy's half-hearted experiment in being a player while retaining core values. She's very good at showing how falling to a minor temptation can break the fall to a greater one, and her redemption is plausible precisely because it's a return to good old habits of mind. The tragedy, such as it is, is Miranda Priestly's (Ms Streep): worse than her future of ruptured intimacies, she'll never be able to keep an assistant as gifted as Andy on hand for long, because anyone that bright and capable will find a more integral route to success. Well, maybe if Andy had really cared about fashion...

If anybody threatens to run away with The Devil Wears Prada, it's Stanley Tucci, who plays Nigel, the magazine's art director. Fans of Mr Tucci who are amused to see him play a gay man for a change ought not to miss how he plays a gay man: at least in public, brains come first for Nigel. His outrages against mainstream masculinity are understated but assured, and he's as tough as any other character that Mr Tucci has ever played. This does not prevent Nigel from being a funny man when he's playing guardian angel to Andy - a role for which you fear he might bill at any exceedingly high hourly rate, the better to make her a quick study.

The three supporting principals are Adrian Grenier, as Andy's dreamy sous-chef boyfriend, Nate; Emily Blunt, as Miranda's insufferable British First Assistant, also named Emily, and Simon Baker, as a writer who incarnates the lesser temptation that I mentioned. Mr Baker is a winning, quietly commanding actor who's very good at the appraising glances and considered gentleness for which Robert Redford is famous. May Mr Baker enjoy half Mr Redford's success, if not more! Mr Grenier's combination of baby-sized eyes (that is, they're huge in his face) and persistent five o'clock shadow would probably win him a career even if his bones were mediocre, but they are not, and the man is in danger of being paid just to show up and grin.

Why should it be so difficult, I'd like to know, to combine boffo New York careers with rich, family-centered lives? You'd think that all the top people would agree (a) to do what they've promised to do and (b) to stop interrupting everyone else's life with last-minute emergencies. Wouldn't you think? [Purse lips]

That's all.