UAE denies banning 'Sex and the City 2'

Dubai says no to Sex and the City 2 filming




DUBAI - The UAE has not banned “Sex in the City 2”, which serves up a stinging portrayal of Muslim society, as the film’s distributor did not seek permission for the film to be shown in the first place.



UAE daily the National said on Thursday that despite reports that the country had banned the movie, an official at the National Media Council told the newspaper that the oversight body was never sent a review copy.



“The first Sex and the City movie was not shown in the UAE because the local distributor never applied for it to be shown,” the spokesman was quoted as saying in the paper. “As for Sex and the City 2, (the distributor) has also not asked us for permission for the film to be shown. This is something of the distributor’s own choice.”



However, a spokesman for the media council had told magazine Time Out Dubai earlier this month that the movie, to be released on May 27, had been banned for “various reasons”.



"Among them are that the film's website stated that filming was done in Abu Dhabi even though they were denied permission to do so," he had said, adding that it "is false ... to attribute the locations shot in Morocco as being in Abu Dhabi".



And the "theme of the film does not fit with our cultural values."



SATC 2’s producers had requested permission to shoot in Abu Dhabi and Dubai last August, saying the capital city “is the new Middle East and the future … There’s a very big story in the Middle East and it also is a very advanced, glamorous capital.”



But the UAE refused, without giving specific reasons.



The TV series Sex and the City is aired in the UAE on Showtime.



SATC 2 is set to spark political debate, with its “scathing portrayal of Muslim society, (the movie) being saucy, proudly feminist and intentionally anti-Muslim”, a U.S.-based reporter was quoted as saying in Time Out Dubai.



Early reviews of the movie suggest it is anti-Muslim, as the four women encounter misogynist attitudes from Middle Eastern men and joke about Muslim women wearing the niqab.



And Kim Cattrall's character, the man-eating Samantha, flouts the UAE’s conservative dress code by wearing revealing clothes.



Brian Lowry, a columnist and critic for U.S.-based showbiz magazine Variety, wrote that the film featured "some not-very-convincing rumination on the treatment of Muslim women - even in what's supposed to be a relatively progressive Arab country - that seems more condescending than stirring".