Secretary

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Secretary
Secretary.jpg

Starring James Spader
Maggie Gyllenhaal,
Jeremy Davies,
Lesley Ann Warren,
Directed by Steven Shainberg
Studio Lions Gate
Runtime 111 minutes
IMDB Info 0274812 on IMDb
Buy it from Amazon.com on VHS
Buy it from Amazon.com on DVD
Review from IMDB.com website:
by persons unknown

Maggie Gyllenhaal deserves an Oscar nomination for her brilliant portrayal of borderline psychotic, self-mutilating Lee Holloway, a former mental institution patient seeking to sustain herself - vocationally and emotionally - in a challenging world where she has few safe harbors. She comes from a messy family background although that alone can't explain her illness.

Learning typing, she gets a secretary's job with lawyer E. Edward Grey (James Spader, who also turns in a first-rate, nuanced performance). Grey refuses to have any computers in his very smart, expensive law office. Like many lawyers he's a perfectionist who abhors typographical errors but his obsession with perfection reflects more than an anal personality hitched to a law degree. His solo practice seems to thrive better than his self-control of a suppressed sexuality, awakened by Maggie at first unknowingly.

This is a film about what many consider to be deviant behavior (sado-masochism and bondage-discipline, not your usual Hollywood romantic fun and games) that most will concur is uncommon in the workplace. Director Steven Shainberg and his cast - and Gyllenhaal and Spader carry the film, forget the supporting actors - show Lee and Grey's rocky and developing relationship with candor, without condemnation and without exploitation. The lawyer and his secretary are sexualized in a way few have experienced and those who have don't talk to folks outside their circle.

This is a black comedy/a black drama. It either grabs or repels the viewer: there's no in-between. The resolution? Is it realistic or a cop-out? I'd love to hear from those able to comment from experience on IMDb's discussion board. But I have a feeling few will post reactions.

A very different film that I rate 8/10 on a personal scale where I value the deep and tortured acting projecting the absorbing conflict of this sexualized working (initially) relationship.

"Secretary" reviews from imDb.com

Review from Amazon.com website:
by persons unknown

The joy of SECRETARY lies in its characters, all of whom are quirky (to say the least). And if you leave the film thankful that you run with "normal" folks, then you probably just don't know the person in the adjacent work cube all that well. As the film begins, Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) has just been released from institutional therapy. Lee has a level of self-esteem that's abysmal to the point of involving self-mutilation with sharp objects. (She even has her own first aid kit to disinfect and treat the wounds as soon as she makes them!) And whatever therapy she got didn't stick. But, life goes on, so she takes a typing class, and subsequently lands a job as a SECRETARY for the perfectionist lawyer "Mr. Grey" (James Spader).

Mutual assessment soon reveals potential for an S&M relationship where Grey is the "S" and Lee the "M". Courting, so to speak, and foreplay involve the boss making increasingly difficult demands of Lee's job performance with the mutual understanding that the latter will fail and punishment will follow. And what's a poor girl to do when making deliberate spelling errors in legal correspondence just doesn't push Grey's lust button anymore?

Spader's Grey persona is so deliciously creepy - not sinister, just creepy - that his paralegal does her work in such an unusual hiding place that she's rarely seen, even by the audience. And the delightful Gyllenhaal's portrayal of Holloway is so otherwise girl-next-door, except for her preoccupation with cutting edges, that I'm now surreptitiously scrutinizing our office secretaries for barely-hidden scars. And Jeremy Davies is terrific as Lee's nominal boyfriend, the painfully pathetic Peter.

While SECRETARY was in the theaters, it probably wasn't a film that you would've taken your prim and proper grandmother to see for her day trip away from the assisted care facility. It has some artistically done full-frontal nudity and a couple scenes of X-rated heavy breathing. SECRETARY is a stylish and darkly humorous treatment of a delicate subject that allows the viewer to snicker without the guilty feeling of having been discovered with a dirty magazine. (Of course, if Granny finds it knee-slapping funny, you might want to rethink your assumptions about her younger years.) My only complaint was that the ending is perhaps a little too drawn out and tidy. A snappier, more edgy conclusion would have made the film a perfect gem.

Now, where did I stash those red, felt tip markers? I have to proof an associate's work.

Product Description

Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) has a few strikes against her when she applies for a secretarial position at the law office of E. Edward Grey (James Spader). Although she's never had a job in her life, Lee is hired by the mysterious lawyer, Mr. Grey. At first the work seems quite normal but soon, in between typing, filing and making coffee, Lee and Mr. Grey embark on a more personal relationship, crossing lines of conduct that would give any human resource director the vapors!


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<page>This is a film about people searching for their own (sexual) identity. It raises many questions and it is a good basis for all sorts of discussions about sex, SM and above all the loneliness we experience on our search for identity.

It is not a bad movie... but it is not a very good one either. However, it could have been so much better....

I was incredibly excited when I heard that there would be a film about SM which is neither porn nor transporting typical clichés or stereotypes.

Indeed one of the things I liked best about this film is the fact that it is so incredibly well investigated. These filmmakers, who claim not to be into SM at all, did a brilliant job portraying why some people are into SM and what exactly they are yearning for.

I also loved the SM scenes shown - strangely beautiful and extremely well done. The religious scenes are not for the faint-hearted Christian, but I loved them and they made sense to me.

Besides, I really liked the soundtrack, too.

All in all a good film if you are NOT into SM and want to know what it is about. It is OK if you are into SM because you feel like finally a filmmaker understood what people like about it and managed to use this knowledge in the film.

BUT: No matter how much I liked the whole idea, there were some major flaws.

I expected a film like "secretary" - I loved its lightness, its humor and the fact that it was not preachy at all. However, you can't say that about this film....

First of all:

Some actors were incredibly BAD - but that might be because some of them were no actors at all. Some of them were good because they were just playing themselves, just like that old man. He was incredible - but that was him, he wasn't acting! Because of the overall bad acting most of the dialogs sounded odd and fairly artificial(they in fact were artificial, which brings me to my next point...)

What really ruined this movie for me were the dialogs: They were highly artificial and/or had a very strong moralizing undertone which really annoyed me. It was almost as if they were so concerned they could fail to bring their message across that everything had to be over-verbalized. I personally like to think for myself and I love to read between the lines. This was not possible in this film. Everything was said. Every point was made way too clear in my opinion. Even though I perfectly agree with what was said I just wish they would have used the film and its storyline to convey their message and not just the sociological sermons of the domina. That was too much for me.

Maybe this is is a good film for people who don't have a clue about SM or those that have just begun their journey, but it definitely isn't if you've already been on that road.

In the end, what did soothe me to some extend was the fact that even this talkative domina has no answer whatsoever when it comes to the longing and the loneliness inside each and every human being.


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Secretary ( 2002 ) (Theme: Master/slave) Starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal
(IMDB# 0274812)

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