Fifty Shades of Grey is on everyone’s smacking lips now that the movie hit theaters in the most romantic weekend of the year. Based on the 2011 erotic novel and best-seller written by E. L. James, the picture managed to get under the skin of the majority, although it is a thin tale, with poorly-built characters sustained by excruciating acting. Basically, the tale focuses on incredibly rich and apparently mysterious Mr. Grey, a business man with an inclination towards BDSM and the fresh graduate, Miss. Anastasia Steel, who is forced through slick means to become his submissive.
What if I told you that before these Fifty Shades, a genuine, witty and charming Mr. Grey was delivered to the cinematographic industry? Released in 2002, (NOTE: almost ten years before the supporting novel was written), Secretary is everything this newly coined frenzy movie is not. If Secretary was a box office leading movie as Fifty Shades of Grey or not, I cannot assume, but it managed to obtain a Golden Globes nomination, which I believe will never be the case of the 2015 released picture. This if you are into judging a book by its covers, or a movie by its nominations and wins. The point is: Secretary does not disappoint.
Let’s dig deeper for the plot. Fifty Shades of Grey is the story of a wealthy, successful and (apparently) highly attractive young man, Mr. Grey, who encounters Miss. Anastasia Steel, a literature student. Apart from his collection of Audi cars (a full-garage of Audi cars), Mr. Grey also has a Black and Red playroom for expressing his ‘’singular tastes’’ in love to any girl who signs an agreement contract and thus approves to participating in BDSM practices as a submissive. Miss Steel is of course presented the contract which she does not sign, but it seems that although its signing is the first rule of this dominant-submissive game, she manages to enter the room of pleasure and have naughty sex with Mr. Grey. Of, the symbolism of the old tale of the woman who tames the untamed man is as old as the ancient story of Gilgamesh and even then, thousands of years ago, it was told with more wit and craftsmanship than Fifty Shades. This is it with the profoundness of the box office lead, which got millions of people into theatres and hundreds of girls crying their hearts out for Mr. Grey. In essence, Fifty Shades of Grey is the American story of boy meets girl, with bondage and rough sex touches.
Secretary, on the other hand, is the story of a woman who was recently released from a mental hospital because of her self-inflicting pain habits. Back home, she makes the first step in order to become socially accepted and gets hired as the secretary of lawyer Mr. Grey. Thus, the dominant and submissive status of the two characters is set even by their social position as employer and employee, which triggers the development of a curious, but meaningful relationship. Although the relationship between the two is a genuine BDSM one, their having sexual intercourse does not cover more than half of the movie (as is the case of Fifty Shades of Grey) and the characters are actually seen as having lives and worries apart from their relationship – which does not constrain any of the two into doing anything which is not in their nature.
Next step: characters and actors. The couple Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele is not only a dull one, but an inconsistent one. Mr. Grey is the rich, attractive guy with a scarring past, which is seen as the root of all evil or BDSM preferences. In the movie, he reaches to confess to Anastasia, to whom he tells the story of his prostitute mother and of his dominatrix partner. Well, in that case, Mr. Grey, you just confessed that you are pathologically ill, with issues which are meant to sensitize female movie watchers, but which are instead the proof of a poorly built character. Instead of a real dominant, Grey is actually portrayed as a stalker, who follows Anastasia and wished to obtain control over all the aspects of her life. Actor Jamie Dornan deserves his fate as Mr. Grey, as he is as uninteresting and as unattractive as the character he portrays. What is outrages about him is not that he has a Black and Red playroom filled with whips and sex toys, but that he has a garage full of cars and he speaks of world hunger and poverty. Miss Anastasia Steel is the literature student who reads Tess of the d’Urbervilles and at the same time accepts expensive gifts from her stalker, Mr. Grey, such as an Apple laptop or even a car. Ironical enough that a literature aficionado falls for the same trick as the main character in the books she reads. Oh, and another hint: a literature student fond of her field of research would never say that she studies ‘’English lit’’ (instead of ‘’literature’’), as abbreviating that very term is an insult towards the teachings in the books she seems to enjoy so much.
Dakota Johnson gives her best, but that lip biting habit of hers is just a petty ad-up to a shallow character and I am really sorry for her having to act along an actor she personally confessed she abhors.
In Secretary, Lee Holloway and the first Mr. Grey of BDSM pictures form a balanced and loving couple, although their sexual tendencies are as well somewhere out of the ordinary. Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader seem to understand their profound and troubled characters and portray them as such, without forgetting to add hilarious defining touches to their basic features. James Spader’s Mr. Grey is indeed mysterious, we have no background information of his childhood, education and such and he resorts to no emotional gimmicks in order to attract the sympathy of the public. He is who he is: a shy attorney with the incapacity of adapting to the norms of society, but a witty and profound person. Lee Holloway has ‘’submissive’’ written all over her DNA and that makes her the perfect candidate for a lifelong love story with Mr. Grey – because although Secretary tackles on the theme of the dominator versus the submissive, that relationship is not seen only from a sexual point of view. The character of Maggie Gyllenhaal is submissive down to her most inner traits, as she is known from the very begging of the movie as being used to harming herself. In her case, Mr. Grey does not enter her world with promises of excitement and adventure; he appears in order to free her from herself, as he shows her the thin line between pain and pleasure, thus stopping her from intentionally harming herself. And Lee Holloway frees Mr. Grey as well, as she is the one who raises the matter of eternal love and obliges him to face his real feelings. Add to this scenery that his passions are orchids (visual symbols of female genitalia) and that she has this cute habit of touching the corner of her lips with her tongue when she is either focused or nervous and you get the cutest S&M couple ever.
It is likely that a comparison between the two movies is a far-fetched choice, because Fifty Shades of Grey is such a shallow and dull picture, that it does not display the necessary tools to be associated with any movie, let alone with Secretary. But the growing frenzy of the phenomenon must be diminished somehow, especially when two other sequels are announced to be released in the following years.
NOTE: Do not feed me the ‘’Oh, but the novels are so well-written’’ line, I am not willing to waste precious time reading any of those books.