Secretary

Recently released from psychiatric care, Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is seeking an escape from her family home. She finds it in employment as secretary to eccentric lawyer E. Edward Grey (James Spader), and as the relationship spirals rapidly beyond the professional it provides more of an escape than Lee could have expected.

Secretary is another of those films that I really ought to have watched ages ago. In this case, I didn't because so many people raved so much about it, I was worried they'd be disappointed if I hated it (which in the end, I didn't).

The film is described (by Wikipedia, at least) as an erotic romance, although it also has elements of romantic and/or sex comedy. The film neither glamourises nor scorns the central BDSM relationship of the film, instead painting it with good and bad tones. Grey's pervasive and self-destructive sense of shame at his own nature is clearly painted as the deviance here (alongside the requests of the self-styled sadists Lee meets later in the film), and the continuation of her unfulfilling relationship with her 'normal' boyfriend the only blameworthy act on Lee's part. In many ways, it takes a subject that expects to be treated as kinky and weird, or played for laughs, and instead makes a conventional romantic comedy of office relationships out of it.

The relationship itself is nuanced and well observed, and the balance of power within it is beautifully portrayed. The distance between the sneering accusation of 'submissive' by Edward's ex and the determined, controlled persona that submission actually brings out of Lee is tremendous. Much of the film's subtext relies on wordless moments, where a lesser film would throw in a bunch of voice over, but Gyllenhaal and Spader carry it with their bodies and faces alone, with Lee's ordeal presented throughout not as degradation, but as triumph.

If the film has a notable weakness, it is that it is too successful in normalising the central BDSM relationship, to the point that it sometimes seems to have lost its USP. It might also have had more punch when it was made, that being a dozen years ago now. It remains an excellent film, however, and one I am glad to have finally seen.

Edited to add: In a more recent discussion of the film, I suggested that it is a film about two very unhealthy people, who are unhealthy in large part because the world tells them that they are and forces them to conform and to hate themselves, who come together and ultimately forge a healthy relationship together.