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Women's favorite R-rated heroines return for bonding and talking in 'Sex and the City'
By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Published on Sunday, May 25, 2008
If there is one scene in the series finale of Sex and the City that justifies the new big-screen continuation, it's the one where Miranda sits beside the bathtub, scrubbing the back of her ailing mother-in-law.
The TV series concluded four years ago with numerous happy endings. Each of the core characters — Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Samantha (Kim Cattrall) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) — was in a satisfying relationship. Charlotte was adopting a child. Samantha, having battled cancer, was getting her sex drive back. Carrie was at home in New York, settling down with Mr. Big (Chris Noth), and the four friends could face anything together.
So why am I thinking about the melancholy of that moment in a bathroom? Because it was a reminder that life is not all happy endings, that love carries with it obligation. (And Miranda's housekeeper/occasional nemesis points out the love in Miranda's taking care of her mother-in-law.)
As Carrie says in promotional material for the movie, ''real life always has a twist.'' And, she has also noted, you need friendships ''to get through it all.''
That's why we're getting a movie. It's not just that some fans have been screaming for a Big-Carrie wedding since before the series ended. Or that fans were all but promised the movie even before then, only to see it delayed amid reports of conflicts among the cast members. (Cattrall in particular was accused of scuttling the movie because she Please see 'Sex', E4
Continued from Page E1
wanted a big payday and more control; Cattrall recently told Entertainment Weekly that her unwillingness to commit was based on personal issues, including her divorce and her father's illness.)
The movie arrives because women still cherish that message about relationships, and want to feel it again. This is not a date-night film, with men dragged along. Sex and the City invites women to see it with their best friends, to laugh and high-five during, and talk about it over drinks and dessert afterward.
While such ventures are not unheard of — TV series like Girlfriends and Lipstick Jungle are very much in the same vein — Sex and the City was still relatively rare in its focus on female bonding in its six-year TV run.
Yes, there was all the explicit talk — about men, women, positions, parts — which carries over to the movie, which is rated R. One clip available for preview has Samantha speaking up for waxing of a specific area.
Yes, there was the longing for love, which also continues in the movie. A new character, an assistant to Carrie played by Jennifer Hudson, says she came to New York ''to fall in love.''
Yes, the trailers and clips make clear, the movie will have the fashions, the shoes and the overall glory that is New York. As the series was winding up, Carrie went to Paris — theoretically the most romantic city in the world. By Sex's conclusion, though, she was back in New York.
But it's the force and the power the women found within themselves, and with each other, that gave the show its emotional impact week in and week out.
It was not a case of ''who needs a man when you have friends?'' Sex was smarter than that. All those Cosmos with the girls filled just one need. The show knew that its women needed love and partnership in a strong relationship, and much of their bumbling came about because they did not know what they wanted or how to get it.
That notion, though, leads to my biggest reservation about Sex during its TV years. Too often, Sex seemed to go out of its way to humiliate its characters; Miranda was a frequent target.
The women were not always admirable; think of Carrie's treatment of gentle Aidan (John Corbett), or Miranda's bullying of Skipper (Ben Weber) and snobbishness about Steve (David Eigenberg). The behavior may have been rationalized by, say, Carrie's not really loving Aidan, or Miranda not yet seeing the best side of Steve. But as many times as the women of Sex were hurt by men, they did their own share of damage along the way.
Yet as the show went along, the women learned things about themselves, their needs and what real love is.
Miranda married Steve. Charlotte put aside fairy tales for the real romance of bald and blunt Harry (Evan Handler). Samantha finally saw that inside a none too bright actor-model (Jason Lewis) was someone who cared for her even when her main weapon, sexual power, was on the fritz.
But the considerable appetite makes clear that there is a large audience that cannot get enough of the show's message of empowerment and women together. Of course, Sex and the City was in many respects a fantasy; Carrie lived awfully well considering that her noticeable income had to be modest (and couldn't begin to explain how she paid for all those shoes). But even at its glossiest, it would find its way to a genuine feeling, and a sense that life didn't end just because you'd made the right match.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in a blog at http://www.ohio.com. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 and rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
If there is one scene in the series finale of Sex and the City that justifies the new big-screen continuation, it's the one where Miranda sits beside the bathtub, scrubbing the back of her ailing mother-in-law.
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