IT’S IMPOSSIBLE to talk about the new “Sex and the City” movie without first mentioning “Sex and the City,” the HBO series; or the rabid fan devotion it enjoyed; or the equally fervent antipathy (female and male) it inspired on socio-political grounds (sort of like the late-’90s equivalent of not letting your daughter play with Barbies); or the recently much-affirmed straight-male aversion to the series, predicated on cooties. In fact, the film arrives shrouded in such a fog of expectation, preconception, anticipation and (now with more post-Hillary bite!) gender bias that it’s hard to see — or write about — the movie for the trees.
Which is too bad, because Michael Patrick King, who executive produced the show (with Darren Star) and wrote and directed the movie, has done some brave, surprising things with it, mining territory that’s been all but abandoned by Hollywood. It’s hard, in fact, to think of any other recent examples of movies that explore the complicated emotional lives of characters comically without stooping to adolescent silliness or that are willing to go to such dark places while remaining a comedy in the Shakespearean sense — all’s well that ends well.
“Sex and the City” can’t rightly be called a romantic comedy in the dismal, contemporary sense, though it is at times romantic and is consistently very funny. It’s also emotionally realistic, even brutal. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall), now in their 40s and 50s, continue to navigate the choppy waters of urban life, negotiating relationships, work, fertility and friendship, only now the stakes are higher, the risks are bigger and decisions feel more permanent.
