Secretary
Review
by : Eric Barker
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Starring:
James Spader (E. Edward Grey), Maggie Gyllenhall
(Lee Holloway), Jeremy Davies (Peter)
Written by:
Erin Cressida Wilson and Steven Shainberg, from story
by Mary Gaitskill
Directed By: Steven Shainberg
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A withdrawn young woman, recently released from a psychiatric
ward, takes a job in a small law firm where she develops a
very kinky relationship with her new boss.
The year’s least politically correct movie, Secretary
is bound to raise a lot of hackles in a country like the United
States, where we are so unaccountably terrified of sex in
all of its manifestations. Never mind power, or speaking of
sex and power together. Although there hasn’t been a
good, honest portrayal of heterosexuality in an American film
since The Last Picture Show (1971)...well, okay,
maybe since Jane Fonda’s Oscar-winning, shocked orgasm
in Coming Home (1979)...we are constantly being told
that movie screens are overflowing with gratuitous sex. The
truth is, any sex that does turn up at the Cineplex is either
adolescent titillation, or the occasional post-coital pan
over heaps of clothing strewn across a floor, to find the
couple talking dreamily in each other‘s arms. Covered
up to the neck.
Where
sex is involved, the American camera is always a minute late
and a dollar short, and it always has been, so it is fitting
that Secretary, the most mature, humane and funny film about
sexuality made in this country in a long time, should be concerned
with the infantile power games and symbolism of bondage and
discipline (a.k.a. B&D to aficionados). Based on a short
story by Mary Gaitskill, in a collection called Bad Behavior,
the film’s plot arc sounds like a letter to Penthouse
circa 1981: shy girl gets job with persnickety boss, boss
spanks girl when she makes mistakes, girl begins to make mistakes
on purpose.
Secretary
is a comedy, to be sure, but its power and dramatic impact
flow out of fully developed characters, people who are based
on psychological realities rather than wishful thinking (or
demographic fears). The film’s protagonist Lee Holloway
begins the film as a recovering victim of depression, a woman
who reacts to the tensions of her codependent family life
with self-mutilation, keeping a sewing kit ever-handy for
the purpose of cutting herself where it won’t show and
bandaging the evidence. As soon as she is out of the hospital,
Lee reverts to this practice, forced to live with her clueless
parents, whose numbskull behavior inspired her to take on
the sins of the world in the first place. Closed off from
allowing herself to feel real emotion, Lee mortifies her own
flesh to stay in touch with a sense of being alive.
When she
meets E. Edward Grey, her first real boss in her first real
job, she discovers a kindred, wounded spirit. Grey is just
as shattered by the dullness of contemporary life as Lee,
falling into obsessive-compulsive patterns and secretly pining
for his lost marriage, appearing on the surface to be an unlikely
dominant personality. But because Grey is fragile himself,
he recognizes Lee’s particular sensitivities, and begins
to push her toward revealing them.
What makes
Secretary so frequently hilarious in the midst of
all this psychic darkness is its persistent willingness to
take sexual “deviance” just a little bit seriously.
Most films touching upon any kind of sadomasochism have traditionally
snickered at the participants, as if each viewer in the audience
did not have some oddball silliness in their own personal
closets. But Secretary is meticulously plausible,
and patient, in exploring the connections between pain and
pleasure, normal and not-normal, anxiety and love, childish
games and arousal (ever tie someone up just for fun when you
were a kid? ever get tied up yourself? no? well, don‘t
knock it). Structured like a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy,
Secretary becomes a nutty, thoroughly enjoyable movie
when Lee falls in love with Edward, a man whom her counselors
might well encourage her to betray to the authorities, and
the conventions of boy-meets-girl are turned upside down and
shaken into free fall, no telling where they'll land. The
film’s most pertinent exchange of dialogue comes at
the end of act two, when a guilt-stricken Edward tells Lee
they cannot continue their liberating, master/slave play forever,
and she asks in all innocence, “Why not?” After
all, no one is watching. Except, of course, those of us in
the audience.
In the
role of Lee, Maggie Gyllenhall provides the film’s center,
a radiant performer getting her first chance to shine, and
in a part most established actresses would shun. It’s
a multi-layered acting job, taking Lee through numerous incarnations,
from infinitely mousey wallflower to sexual tiger to determined
adult, with a comic skill worthy of Lily Tomlin and a burning
sensuality that would (or should) make any supermodel blush
head-to-toe. Several critics have predicted that Secretary
will make Gyllenhall a star, and while it is too early to
know for sure (a lot of people have to see this movie for
that to happen), there is no doubt this is one of the year’s
best performances. The camera adores Gyllenhall’s impish,
mutable face, making sure she lingers in the mind long after
the film ends.
Secretary
has many other good performances, particularly James Spader,
who has specialized for most of his career in believable weirdos,
having one of his finest hours as Lee’s totally screwed-up
boss. The fact that Gyllenhall is so wonderful in this movie
is due in no small part to her undeniable chemistry with Spader,
who gives her a rich, unpredictable foil to react against.
If Secretary
has failings, it is in the screenplay’s insistence on
following the romantic comedy formula too closely for the
sake of consistency, and in director Steven Shainberg‘s
R-rated circumspection, his tastefully vanilla handling of
the actual B&D scenes, unintentionally ironic for a liberal-minded
film about pushing limits. But in spite of these minor flaws,
Secretary remains a refreshing film, the movie that
9 ½ Weeks thought it was and failed, miserably,
to be.
A sex
comedy for the 21st century, Steven Shainberg’s Secretary
is a step in the right direction for a culture that views
any sexual difference as an intractable step toward madness.
This is a genuine film for adults, one that portrays the line
between irrational desire and the politics of the everyday
as an invisible and arbitrary barrier, always subject to situational
ethics. And Shainberg seems to be a filmmaker who knows that
Personality, the most misunderstood of American commodities,
is only hard on the outside; on the inside, regardless of
social position, we’re all just lonely kids searching
for the right friend to play with.
Notes:
Won a
Special Jury Prize for Originality at Sundance in January.
Maggie
Gyllenhall is the older sister of Jake Gyllenhall. They acted
together in Donnie Darko (2001).
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