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Steve Shainberg, USA, 2002, 104 minutes
Imagine the lamest rom-com ever. The one that made your teeth ache with its saccharine outlook and instilled an intense desire to gouge your eyes out with a rusty carrot scraper. Winner of spate of awards in 2002, including the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Secretary is the total antidote. Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) has recently been discharged from a mental hospital and starts working as a secretary for weird-but-strangely-hot lawyer Edward Grey (James Spader). Besides having a scary obsession with typos, Mr. Grey’s penchant for sadomasochistic spanking sessions in the office soon becomes (explicitly) obvious.
Secretary is not everyone’s cup of tea. Few, if any, mainstream films have the guts to tackle such daring subject matters in an everyday, let alone romantic, context. Maggie Gyllenhaal was a relative unknown to audiences before appearing in this film but her deservedly acclaimed performance catapulted her into the public domain. Likewise Spader manages to take on the role of a potentially unlikeable character and manages to make him if not exactly cuddly then at least sympathetic. An excellent supporting cast includes Jeremy Davies’ superb performance as super-wet, cringe-inducing boyfriend Peter and Lesley Anne Warren as Lee’s terrifying mother.
A kinky, twisted and romantic treat. Go see!
Review by Flippanta Kulakiewicz
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2008
If you’ve read about Secretary and didn’t know better you’d swear it was French. Or at least European. I mean, how many American movies tackle sexuality in a deeply mature way whilst still ensuring you leave the cinema in an almost disablingly horny haze?!
Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a quiet troubled young woman who finds comfort in cutting herself. There’s nothing extraordinary about her life, she just can’t cope with it. When her parents discover her self-harming behaviour they are appalled, shocked and desperate to help. So they send her to get treatment, then to secretarial school, and finally to a job interview with lawyer E. Edward Grey (James Spader). It’s then her life really starts to change…
Taking on one controversial subject is evidently too easy for director Steven Shainberg. So here he takes two, and hugely difficult, controversial and very anti-box office subjects they are too.
We’ve seen self-harm on screen before but Shainberg’s sympathetic direction combined with Gyllenhaal’s incredibly delicate and intelligent performance certainly lend Lee an enlightening and painful credibility.
Then we reach the sadomasochism. Many films approach S/M as either the explanation of crazed killers or as a broad source of comedy, it’s extremely rare to see anything approaching understanding or care for the characters. Whilst Secretary sees the humour in the situation, overall there is an integrity and warmth for even the cold and perhaps clichéd character of E. Edward Grey. After all a sadistic lawyer is certainly not a new idea, but for once Spader has been persuaded to tone down his trademark sliminess so that a wonderful balance is struck between Grey’s vicious persona and the gradually revealed masochism that underlies it.
However, even if a nice bit of pain doesn’t really turn you on I urge you to see this: Secretary is a beautifully shot, wonderfully unique and extremely sensitive film. Even more incredibly it’s an intelligent film for adults. Made in America. I’d almost forgotten that was possible.
Review by Nicola Osborne
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2004