twenty-something women come to New York City in search of the two L's

Labels and Love. or so begins Sex and the City with the voice of Carrie Bradshaw the protagonist of the infamous uberfeminine TV series-turned-film. so i saw it a few days ago and liked it. in the past i tried to bring myself to get addicted to the series (yes, it's a conscious effort) in hopes of at least understanding what about it that drew in such crazed fans single and married alike. as it turned out, i was somewhat disappointed because i got the impression (perhaps a wrong one) that the series was a little too much on the drama side. so, unlike the suburban Desperate Housewives  or recently the ultra-cosmopolitan socialite Cashmere Mafias, SATC failed to win me over, for it didn't have this sharp witty biting edge to it that i'm personally fond of as a viewer. 

To be sure, the movie version also doesn't possess such quality. But perhaps it's the cinematic pace of it that does the trick for me. Very swift, assured, and to the point, SATC managed to hold my undivided attention throughout the entire two-hourish session (quite a challenge if u know the ADD me). The protagonist's voiceover works really well as, uhm, the guiding voiceover and more importantly as the meta-structural self-reflection and doubt of the protagonist herself. 

The art direction is of course overwhelmingly praised. From the costumes, which naturally outshine other aesthetic elements, to settings (classy bars, cafes, and the New York public library) and lavish decors, the viewer can tell where a large part of the budget went. If the lives of these women can be described as superficial frivolity, what other alternative could have been employed to convey such decadence if not the dazzling of the actual "surface." Better yet, the dazzling display gets a little too, well, dazzling on occasions. Yes, i'm talking about the graphic scenes, all of which were made blurry by the censorship unit of Thailand's Ministry of Culture, the cultural watch-dog who is notorious for its history of banning movies, songs, and other media from Thailand and overseas alike. In a country where political democracy has been obsessively preached and fetishized (but not necessarily practiced), cultural democracy is suppressed and dictated to the extent that a ministry was established to inform the people of what is right and wrong culturally. If hypocrisy is not the right word to label the current state, i don't know which will. 

Despite the blurred scenes, SATC fortunately was not banned altogether. Given the number of Thai fans sworn by the TV series, to disallow the movie from our theaters would sure cause some roar. Much as I hate to compare the film version to its original version, for I believe there'll always be something lost "in translation" necessarily entailed in the cross-media appropriation/interpretation (which is not always a bad thing), lots of my friends think that the film does the series justice. Of course, I have no authority to comment on this seeing that I have yet to finish one episode of the show. But for what it's worth, I enjoyed it a lot. And this is not a "chick flick", mind you. because the ladies are no longer chicks? or the movie itself doesn't fall under that category? i'll ponder in my sleep. bonne nuit tout le monde.