Sadomasochism Is the Original Tie That Binds
By Kate Brokaw
A&F Staff Writer

It’s easy to see why Secretary won a special award for originality at last year’s Sundance Film Festival: Steven Shainberg’s film revels in defying feminist standards, as it shows a shy woman finding empowerment from what could be referred to as sexual harassment. Secretary’s attempts to push the envelope don’t always play out, but that’s simply because in the end, it’s really just a fairy tale about two lonely people realizing their compatibility. Inside its dark, twisted world of sadomasochism beats the heart of an ultimately conventional love story.

“In one way or another, I’ve always suffered,” confesses Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal). A socially awkward young woman with a predication for self-mutilation, she’s just been released from a mental institution.

Still burdened with a dysfunctional home life, she continues to return again and again to a box of tools that she uses to burn and cut herself.

Trying to get her life back on track, Lee applies for a secretarial position with a lawyer named E. Edward Grey (James Spader), whose insistence on her using only a classic clickety-clack typewriter is only the beginning of a long list of fetishes. “It’s dull work,” Grey warns her. “I like dull work,” Lee replies. “I want to be bored.”

She thrives on the monotony of the job and also on Grey’s brusque instructions for how Lee should answer the telephone and conduct herself in the office. But it turns out Lee is in for much more than office boredom from her nervous, edgy employer: soon, he begins instructing her in how to conduct her after-hours life– like exactly how many peas she should eat at dinner.

Ironically, his dominance and quirky demands give Lee’s life a twisted structure and a newfound purpose, and she begins to find herself drawn to her employer, who she finds much more intriguing than her quiet, awkward boyfriend (Jeremy Davies, doing quiet and awkward as he does best).

But the real attraction begins on the day Mr. Grey calls Lee into his office and reprimands her for typing too many mistakes in a letter.

He orders her to lean over his desk and read back the text of the typo-ridden document. And there, he gives her a hard spanking.

The camera focuses on Gyllenhaal’s face as her gasps of agony turn into what can be construed only as a kind of ecstasy, a wondrous amazement at a new kind of pleasure.

Remember, this is a woman who has always enjoyed self-inflicted pain. Now she’s got someone else to do the heavy lifting.

All of the feminist logic you carry into the theater may now begin to fail you. As socially unacceptable as this office behavior may be, Lee is excited and self-satisfied, and subsequently begins to carry herself more confidently.

Soon, she starts misspelling words on purpose, setting the stage for a series of S&M games that thrill her like nothing in her life ever has.

And yet as soon as the submissive starts actively seeking notice from her dominant partner, the fantasy is shattered. Mr. Grey can’t get over the self-loathing that comes along with his role. But with her newfound sexual empowerment, it isn’t so easy for Lee to let all of this go.

Gyllenhaal does wonders with her first lead role. (Take those bets now– will Maggie or Jake become the more famous Gyllenhaal?) Those marvelously expressive Betty Boop eyes are just a small part of what is an enormously risky, daring performance. These aren’t always easy characters to watch, but Gyllenhaal wins our heart and our sympathy immediately, and the film spares no measure in helping us to understand her yearnings.

Spader has a crucial role in all this as well, creating a character who can believably deliver all these imperious demands while still maintaining a confused inner terror at his own desires. Nothing in Mr. Grey is revealed too quickly, because his shaky nature needs to be able to evolve into something that can not only challenge Lee, but also seduce her as well.

Shainberg and his cinematographer Steven Fierberg have created a movie that’s all deep, jewel-colored saturation, as if to suggest that these dark sexual fantasies may as well have a weird fantasy world to occur in.

Peculiar close-ups and mysterious habits slowly reveal themselves only as the film goes on. (Keep an ey e on the
lawyer’s rows and rows of neatly lined up red Sharpie markers.)

It’s a strange and creepy setup, to be sure, and while hints of dark humor and compassion often break through, Secretary essentially maintains a very edgy nature until its final arc. And there, the risky, more out-there nature of the first three quarters of the film is thrown over for what is a rather conventional, romantic movie ending, absent from the short story (by Mary Gaitskill) upon which the film is based.

In a filmmaking culture overly fearful of anything sexually off-center, Secretary is certainly worth praising for its nimble, complex presentation of sex as a form of freedom.

But the film just isn’t as groundbreaking as it makes itself out to be. As revolutionary as Lee’s sexual empowerment might seem, her happiness in the end hinges on acceptance by her Prince Charming, because it is only with him that she can find true fulfillment.

Secretary takes great pains (literally) to tell us that when we truly understand each other, we can take personal freedom with our bodies and souls. “If we can fully experience pain as well as pleasure,” a self-help tape drones, “we can live a much deeper and more fulfilling life.”

Beyond the spankings and the sexual power struggle of Secretary is a how-to manual on finding love and acceptance within the unconventional.