NEW YORK — Early on in the new “Sex and the City” film — and don’t worry, we’re not spoiling the plot here — Carrie and longtime love Mr. Big are in bed together.
A passionate interlude? Nah, they’re just reading. Except they both need glasses, and there’s only one pair.
Sharing reading glasses in bed? These two, who fogged up the small screen with their sexual chemistry during the TV series? Yes, and that small moment is a sweet acknowledgment that they’ve both aged.
As, of course, have we.
The series may be alive and well on TBS reruns. But it’s been a full decade since “Sex and the City” premiered on HBO, bringing us sex columnist Carrie, her three pals, and their lustful urban quest for love, good sex and even better clothes.
That means the 30-somethings who spent six seasons drinking and trysting with abandon are now 40-somethings, with a couple of characters flirting with 50. Cynics ask, Can they pull this off? How does the movie get around the age issue?
In interviews a week ago, the cast answered that question unanimously: It doesn’t. Age is not avoided. It is embraced and even savored — like a cold Cosmopolitan.
“When we started cobbling together the movie, we knew there was only one road we could take,” said Sarah Jessica Parker, who stars as Carrie and co-produced the film. “You cannot pretend we’re 32, still running around New York drinking with liberty and looking for interesting sexual partnerships.
“It would have been vulgar.”
And so the film begins not where the series left off four years ago, but in the present. Carrie, now in her early 40s, is a contributing editor to Vogue and a best-selling author.
She’s got more money, and she’s got Big, who, you may recall, flew to Paris in the series finale to rescue her from a bad relationship. They’re in a happy place, there are wedding plans afoot and an amazing dress.
But things are not all going to be easy. Four years have passed, and there’s a lot more time invested in the relationships.”
That includes the ties between the women, said Cynthia Nixon, aka Miranda, the high-strung lawyer who is at a breaking point when the movie begins.
“We were all aware, partly because of the big screen but also because we’re older, that there has to be a maturity there with the way we confront problems,” Nixon said.
With that maturity, and nobody left to represent the younger set, director Michael Patrick King brought in Jennifer Hudson, the 26-year-old Oscar winner from “Dreamgirls,” to play Carrie’s tech-savvy assistant.
Parker said the purpose of the new role is “to reflect what that time of life is all about, how you feel about love, and how simple it is then.”
To Hudson, that makes sense.
“Now there’s another kind of character the audience can relate to,” she said.
Aging is not just a female process, of course, and Mr. Big, played by Chris Noth, has a little added gravitas now, perhaps a few gray hairs. Noth, 53, seems thrilled that the film is presenting a set of mature characters.
“Where did the notion come from that the lives of adults are less interesting than the lives of those under 30?” he said. “I actually think the movie has MORE relevance. I think the girls look better. And I’m just happy that we have some adult entertainment here.
“We’ve strayed so far in our culture, it’s like, you know, can kiddie time be over?”
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