Sex and Another City --The Hollywood Reporter: Risky Business

By Steven Zeitchik

22105sex_city_278x150_2 Paris in the springtime means late evenings, leisurely meals and unexpected romance. And that's how one curious blogger found himself one warm May evening with a few hundred of some of the trendiest people in Paris, waiting on a Left Bank street while...

OK, so we're not Carrie Bradshaw. But the tonal mimicry seems appropriate given where we did find ourselves at about 10 p.m. this evening: standing with several hundred Parisian women, mainly in their late teens and twenties, engaging in that most European of activities -- waiting on a line.

A ticketholders line, to be precise, which is what the crowds of moviegoers had formed outside the St. Germain des Pres' MK Odeon on this, Europe's opening night of "Sex and the City," a line stretching down one block, into and through a crosswalk, down the next block and around that block's corner, scores and scores of women (and a few very game boyfriends) as far as the eye could see.

Maybe we've been doing this too long -- or maybe we simply wanted to take our minds off any feelings of emasculation -- but our first thought was: someone, preferably someone on Bob Shaye's payroll, should take a picture and send it to Jeff Bewkes.

As it happened, we had no camera and seem to have misplaced the Time Warner CEO's mailing address, so we joined the hordes wending their way down Rue St Germain and into the theater, in a scene that was no doubt repeated dozens of times across this and other European capitals tonight. (Of course it seemed appropriate to watch the story pick up again in Paris given that that's pretty much where the final episode left off, at least until the last scene.)

Once inside, the movie's opening sequence, as expected, played to a spirited reaction: loud cheering and excited chatter continuing even a few scenes into the film. What was less expected was what the crowd would react to. Sure, there were the laughs at the raunchy visual gags that travel well -- humping dogs, phallic sushi and the like.

But the interesting thing was that the audience seemed to laugh at parts that we could swear were supposed to play straight, and in the U.S. no doubt will -- a mid-bridge reunion between a reconciling couple, a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend's decision to let his soon-to-be-ex girlfriend keep a ring -- and, most noticeably, a decision by a couple to enter therapy. Therapy? A couple? Now that's comedy.

There were reports from early U.S. screenings of moviegoers weeping at some of these scenes. No sniffles here.

All this made us realize that for all of the HBO series' popularity in Europe, it really played as frilly fun -- with New York an idealized fairy-tale setting -- not as the more earnest exploration of feelings that at least in part drew U.S. viewers.

After the movie let out, everyone stood on the sidewalk discussing their favorite moments -- while smoking, an activity noticeably absent from the film itself -- and it made us wonder (as our head mysteriously started to hear a voiceover): If the New Yorkers in the show idealized Paris and the Parisians outside idealized New York, was anyone truly happy where they were?

And if everyone here seemed to be having such a good time, had Paris, in fact, become the new New York?

Then we went home and typed these thoughts into a computer.

About Risky Business

Risky Biz blog takes a deep, daily look at the film industry's ups, downs and deals from around the world and the heart of Hollywood. It is edited by media and entertainment journalist Steven Zeitchik, with contributions from The Hollywood Reporter's worldwide team of film editors and reporters. Zeitchik is a Los Angeles-based writer for THR and also has written for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

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