Calming the Voices That Scream ‘Shop!’

[groovedaddy]

OVER the last decade, the term “guilty pleasure” has lost virtually all meaning. What other kinds of pleasures do we have anymore? But should you want to see a movie that puts guilt and pleasure back together again, “Confessions of a Shopaholic” may be the ticket. It was green-lighted back when consumer confidence still gushed like a Champagne fountain and shopping bags were something to flaunt instead of hide. Now, following on the spike heels of “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Sex and the City” and “Legally Blonde,” the latest style-centric antiheroine, the shopaholic Becky Bloomwood, arrives on screens Friday, with a credit bubble popped all over her face like so much pink bubble gum.

Many people assume the film’s release is terrible timing. If they only knew the truth: Becky does not shop so much as lie, cheat and scheme to keep her secret from being detected. As a comical allegory for the last 15 years, when fashion-mad consumerism, among several other things, drove the world’s economy to new heights, the film stirs up prickly issues about the complex interplay of women, fashion, spending and identity.

And as a panicked Becky (who works as a financial journalist, no less) conceals her mounting debt and dreams of a magical bailout, the story has a painfully familiar ring. Frothy as it is, “Confessions of a Shopaholic” glorifies overshopping about as much as “Trainspotting” glamorized heroin.

“I think it’s amazing timing!” said Madeleine Wickham, alias Sophie Kinsella, who wrote the original novel 10 years ago. In New York for the film’s premiere last week, she agreed to have lunch — and do a little shopping — at what might be Becky’s mother ship: Bergdorf Goodman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/fashion/12SHOPAHOLIC.html?th&emc=th