Evelina Khromchenko, the editor-in- chief of L'Officiel Russia will be the Russian voice over for Meryl Streep's character, Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada when the movie debuts in that country on October 5, 2006.
The movie, from 20th Century Fox and based on the bestseller by American author Lauren Weisberger, features Streep portraying Miranda Priestly, the powerful and demanding head of the glossy fashion magazine Runway.
The book about a young journalist starting her career as a personal assistant to the glamour monster Priestley was propelled to the top of the world's bestseller lists, partly due to fact that the Weisberger's resume includes the stint as the assistant to Anna Wintour, head of American Vogue with a reportedly icy reputation that parallels Priestley. The workplace drama by David Frankel of The Sex and the City TV series' fame has already grossed over $107 million in US, according to www.kinoafisha.ru. The Devil Wears Prada costume designs were made by yet another star of The Sex and the City, Patricia Field. Field was catapulted to international celebrity for her work with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristen Davis, Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattrall.
American film critics agree, Streep's iconic performance as editrix Miranda Priestly will be revered and cherished as a classic.
Vadim Smirnov of Gemini Marketing states, "We have a practice to invite local stars to dub movies coming out in the Russian market. This is a regular international practice: Anton Komolov dubbed Sid the Sloth in both Ice Age cartoons; and Oleg Tabakov was the voice behind Garfield in two comedies about the lovely cat. Engaging a real head of a fashion magazine to dub a glossy editor-in-chief character takes it a step further. Evelina Khromchenko turned out to be the ideal for the part; she knows the fashion world from the inside out, in addition her 10 years of radio experience".
Ms. Khromchenko says "Designer Patricia Field introduced me to David Frankel in Paris who was there to watch the first fashion show of his life. They were also scouting locations for the film and seeking partnerships with key fashion houses. That was the first time the possibility of dubbing the character in Russian was presented and I readily accepted. I felt it was a sort of sequel to Robert Altman's Pret-a-Porter and I wanted to defend esprit de corps. I thought the book is rather one-sided, and I certainly didn't expect the movie to be fair. Fortunately, the plot and the movie were made by gifted people who never took the sides of either the boss or the subordinate. Meryl Streep is a genial actress capable of delicately expressing something that the author somehow missed or didn't understand. So, Miranda in the movie is more real-life yet a bit ludicrous figure than her movie analogue".
