Sex and the City
Carrie, Amanda, Charlotte and the irrepressible Samantha return to the screen in a story that resumes a few years after we last saw them.
Following a recap of each character, we are told where they are now, and what they’re doing, before the storyline chugs into gear.
There’s not a lot to say about the film from a critical point of view, because it is essentially a film for die-hard fans. Although even some of them might be taxed by the film’s excessive duration (nearly two and a half hours: that’s at least a pitcher-worth of Cosmopolitans by this reviewer’s reckoning).
Think labels and name-dropping. The only name this reviewer actually cared about was Diane Arbus, referenced in a comment (the film’s funniest), by Candice Bergen as Carrie’s editor, talking with Carrie about doing a bridal fashion shoot. She says something about forty being the oldest a woman can be photographed in a wedding dress without an unintended Diane Arbus subtext. Touché.
It is disappointing that the film focuses more on labels and relationships with men, than the relationships between the women, which, one would have thought would have grown even deeper.
There are the obligatory emotional setbacks and of course fashion references, presented in all their gaudy glory, courtesy of the film’s stylist: Patricia Field. It would be safe to say that Carrie’s outfits, in particular, lean towards a more American sensibility. One couldn’t imagine the more sophisticated trans-Atlantic style cognoscenti getting overly excited about the way she is put together, so to speak. But that's the difference with them, isn't it? They don't have to be told how to dress: they know.
It is striking how, tottering in her stilettos, Carrie looks like a little girl in her mother's oversized shoes. Except that she’s forty. There’s something disturbing about that. Perhaps not as disturbing as Arbus's photos, but then Arbus's photos are vastly more interesting than any fashion show or magazine photo shoot.
Fans of the show’s edgy nature, might be disappointed by its relatively tame disposition – though, in fairness, it may be indicative of the time that has intervened since the series first went to air, that makes it seem this way.
The characters are all very similar, with one striking exception: something has been added to New York's uptown drinking water, because Mr Big seems like a completely different character.
Do women really live this way? A glance at a shot of the public being contained behind a cordoned area during an exterior shot shown in a "making of" programme, would indicate that they don't. It's more likely that young women aspire to live this way, modelling themselves on the behaviour of these characters and their lifestyle.
So, why would they want to live this way? Perhaps it's the unwitting and inevitable result of indoctrination by by TV and film media, driven and bloated as they are, by product placements.
Is it overly optimistic to hope that young women see Sex and the City as mindless escapism?
But without the glam, it wouldn’t be Sex In The City, would it? At least, it wouldn’t be what SATC became in later series. And as Samantha would say: there’s no harm in a bit of mindless fun.