Perfect package
Deborah Ross
Sex and the City 15, Nationwide
Ido know that not everyone gets Sex and the City. Bubbles, for example, does not get Sex and the City. ‘I don’t know what you see in this crap,’ he would say, whenever I watched it on television, and before going off to do something pointedly manly in his bowl, like scratch his bits with undisguised gusto. (Seriously, you try living with Bubbles.) But if you do get Sex and the City — note how I use ‘get’, rather than ‘like’, implying that it only appeals to smart, special people, such as myself — you will so love this movie. I totally loved it. OK, maybe it is, at 145 minutes, just five episodes glued back to back, and maybe bigger isn’t better — there is just more of it — but I laughed, I cried (twice; properly) and, when Carrie turned up for dinner in a corsage the size of a serving platter, I did not wonder why nobody said, ‘Jesus, Carrie, what on earth do you think you are wearing? Take it off, woman. Take it off.’ To wonder would, of course, mean you just don’t get it at all.
It’s been four years since the TV series finished and since we last saw the girls and you know what? I’ve missed them. I’ve missed Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and even Charlotte (Kirstin Davis), the rather dull preppy one who is never given much to do but does have great hair. (‘I’ll give you that, she does have great hair,’ even Bubbles will concede.) I am still trying to work out why I actually care. Do I identify with them? Nope. Do I wish they were my girlfriends? Certainly not. Have I ever confused sex with shoes? Only once, in Clarkes, and it was so embarrassing I swore never, ever again. It’s just this marvellous package, one which is not just fun, but also sells its menfolk deliciously short — it is such a hoot, seeing women objectifying men — embraces real drama along with all the fashion hoo-ha and has, at its heart, four women who are such busy professionals they only have time to meet for breakfast, elevenses, lunch, six trips round Bloomingdales, tea, a detoxifying body wrap, cocktails, Botox, four opening parties, dinner and a nightcap. Sometimes, Miranda and elevenses can be a close-run thing, but then she is an ‘exhausted working mother’, too. Sex and the City is the sort of wonderful wallow that you can take as seriously as you so fancy. This may be its beauty.
The film opens, as those that get it would absolutely expect it to, with a voiceover from Carrie. It goes: ‘Year after year, twentysomething women come to New York City in search of the two “Ls”: labels and love. Twenty years ago, I was one of them, having gotten the knack for labels early...I concentrated on love.’ The quartet have matured. Carrie no longer types in her underwear and has suggested to Mr Big that they tie the knot. Miranda lives in Brooklyn with Steve and their son, Brady, who has the colouring of an orang-utan, which has to be a worry. (‘Even I’m worried,’ says Bubbles.) Samantha, who once made my heart sing by shouting ‘I’m fortyf******five and proud of it!’, is living in California with Smith and wilting with the dreary monogamy of it all. Charlotte and Harry have a little Chinese daughter who also has great hair, although this may not have been the main reason behind her adoption. The premise is: now they’ve all found love, and are no longer searching, what happens next?
OK, last week I said that Indiana Jones did what it said on the reel can and, to a certain extent, so does this. There are the shoes and the frocks and a multitude of those ‘what is she wearing?’ moments and for one brief yet sublime moment even a revival of the tutu that Carrie wore in the opening credits of the TV show. But, along with the laugh-out-loud moments — Samantha and the sushi; prissy Charlotte pooping her pants — there are also moments of real and involving heft, including a wedding sequence that is a full-blooded heart stopper. (Parker, by the way, is terrifically good; amazing.) This is the other beauty of Sex and the City: just as you’re beginning to think enough of this cliché-riddled rubbish already, it’ll do something to grab you by the throat and thrash you about a bit. There is a reunion scene on Brooklyn Bridge that had me blubbing like the lachrymose old fool that I am.
Actually, the Sex and the City movie may even be more than the sum of the TV episodes which, in turn, might be quite something. No, it doesn’t break new ground, but it does know its own ground perfectly. Not that Bubbles will have any of it. ‘If you don’t mind, I’m off to read my Top Gear magazine. I’m an issue behind as it is.’
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