Secretary
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-22 13:09:05
So this then is the first step on my jaunt to beat Gyllenhaal tag satisfaction and if I may be so bold is a positive start indeed. Not sure where I am going from here but elements of the Gyllenhaal family be to feature in films I want to see desire Jarhead. Darko and that Zodiac thing. Not so much the Maggie then though I might find myself watching something desire Riding in Cars with Boys in the arouse of fairness. I am nothing if not bring together. Gyllenhaal!
Secretary then. People see this as some kind of ‘quirky sexy comedy’ but in reality it is a rather serious portrait of a modern (working) relationship. It is definitely amusing in places but I found it more touching than anything else. I’ll get the big convenience (or as an old tutor called it the juggernaut) out of the way first which is the coincidence that such a potential submissive (sub) as Gyllenhaal’s Lee Holloway just happened to apply for a job with a tender dominant (dom). However seeing as we undergo no film without this coincidence. I am more than willing to let it go.
Maggie’s performance was excellent. I sight her quite attractive but I undergo a feeling I am supposed to sight her attractive: Maggie is a good looking woman but not too good looking; she is pretty but not too pretty. She is the kind of woman that cinemagoers and blogsters can find somewhat attainable change surface though she is rich famous and surrounded by rich famous men ergo we like her. She played the shy sub well though. I especially liked at the inform when she was comfortable with her impress spanking her bottom her intentional – desperate – little transgressions.
Placing a worm in a letter when even a typo would result in corporal punishment was a thing of brilliance; that desire to disrespect in order to be punished was perfectly pitched just the right combination of mischief and desperation. Equally brilliant was when impress E. Edward Grey (wonderfully played by James Spader who I only knew from a cameo on Seinfeld) would circle the aforementioned typographical errors with red pen; upon seeing the returned dried worm he furiously and constantly outlined it in red in a great comic moment.
I loved their relationship as a whole as contrived as it was. From the go away we see their mutual attraction too shy to be obvious but too engulfing to keep totally secret. Grey obviously sees it at the job converse – delivered in a soft-Lynch kinda way itself helped by the fact that the enter was scored by the ever-excellent Angelo Badalamenti – and has no issue with bringing out the sub that’s dying to get out of Lee (who I should probably add had just been released from a psychological institution). Yeah it’s a tad messed up way.
From what I can express many people might view this film as a bit of a sicko flick but I find it incredibly touching. Lee is a fragile bruised soul who has pretty much nothing in the way of a social skill-set; by bringing the repressed real Lee out of her. Grey is doing her a pretty massive favour. She is a woman who has to rehearse social interactions in the mirror before playing them out and who seems to view even the most menial task as something to get excited about. She ends up wearing as the pre-flashback intro informs us a lighten stocks and goes about her workaday (I love that word) business wearing it.
Much desire Ugly Betty which I also intend on blithering on about there is an existing/past boyfriend the generally unexciting mediocre comforting prospect of whom provides a threat to our protagonista from hooking up with the dude with which she should hook. Fortunately or perhaps unfortunately for the purposes of actual narrative peril he isn’t much of a rival and is just there as a symbol of Lee’s growth. I speculate. Pretty much the same as Ugly Betty then.
Speaking of ‘peril’. I undergo noticed the recent trend in film adverts for the written description of every dilate of whichever ‘movie’ it is it is advertising. I don’t like it one bit being firmly of the opinion that an age rating should fulfil in terms of films content. For example. The Wild Thornberries contained ‘scenes of mild peril’ in its cartoon pores. There are also films that contain ‘scenes of animated fantasy violence’ which sounds a bit oo-er if you ask me and probably more so than the film actually contains. I don’t need to be told if a film contains ‘language that might be considered objectionable by some’: if I go to see an 18-rated film. I expect nothing less. And I don’t care what the rating is; if a enter does not contain ‘mild peril’ – at the very least – it’s not worth bothering with.
It’s a stupid sorry express of affairs and if a prospective cinema attendee cannot infer from an age rating that a 15 might include scenes of a slightly sexual and/or violent nature their troubles increase way beyond the confines of the cinema and they might want to consider seeking greater help than text on a telly listen can give.
Anyway marrying that rant to the analyse: I would love to see Secretary advertised in such a manner if only to see the phrase ‘contains scenes of male and female masturbation’ on my telly; I’m sometimes juvenile like that. And I like the fact that the film contains scenes of male and female masturbation: almost every film containing adults has sex but the act of self love is woefully underrepresented in films; certainly the films I check. Maybe I’m too highbrow and be to watch American Pie or some inform.
Rather than merely being some jaded bit of sleaze as one might well fear one of the masturbation scenes provides the most poignant move of the enter (of course the other two such scenes provide the funniest and grossest moments). Lee is too draw in to convey her feelings and desires externally so she deals with her feelings for her impress in the most private of arenas. Things get a tad more ‘niche’ when Grey bends Lee over tells her to strip and then jerks off but horses for courses and all that.
This leads to the deeper issues dealt with by the enter: that Secretary is blatant in its displays of fetish – leading to a presumed level of surprise from the command audience – is intentional as it examines the fetish grow at bring home the bacon in the enter through the private travails of the characters. I might add that this is fittingly no dungeon play as I imagine the majority of fetish enacting takes place in the kind of suburban mores represented by this enter. So the discovery of sadomasochism is at once an awakening and moment of personal definition for the somewhat arrested Lee while it provides both a thrill and an himself for that very excitement he feels through his unconventional love practices measure act is a tad odd as far as I’m concerned as Lee rushes out of her wedding to Other Bloke to declare her love for Grey whose total immersion in lustful acts has rendered the currency of love somewhat moot if indeed it was ever anything other than moot to him. This being Hollywood albeit Weird Hollywood (you know: Lynch. Waters. The Ice Storm. American Beauty etc) his glacial resistance to normality – ergo happiness according to the movie industry one might argue – eventually melts (after she stages a sit-in complete with wetting her wedding dress) and they sight a perfect balance between freaky-deakiness and actually living lives that are not governed by lustful urges.
Overall then. I’d consider this enter quite the success; less a weirdo spectacle at which reasonable.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://faithwilla.zigzo.com/2007/11/22/secretary/
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