Review

Review Date: 13-October-02
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Secretary (2002)

Some matches are made in Heaven. And some, as Steven Shainberg's film "Secretary" reveals, are made in the sick little psyches of mental patients and lawyers, and are no less ideal because of it.

"Secretary" stars Maggie Gyllenhaal (Jake's sister) as Lee, a generally decent young woman who deals with the stress of her unhappy home by routinely lacerating herself. Having accidentally slit her wrist during one of these little operations, she has spent time in a psychiatric hospital and returns home at the beginning of the film to give life another go. Things appear to be off to fairly normally start when Lee acquires a beau (Jeremy Davies), takes a typing course, and gets a job. As fate would have it, however, her new boss is none other than E. Edward Grey (James Spader), an eccentric, punctilious attorney who seems unable to find any pleasure in life outside of watching other people squirm. Voila! Lee replaces her self-mutilation with punishment from another quarter, and Grey discovers actual enjoyment in having a completely willing object on whom to exercise his controlling fantasies. Before too long, Lee is serving up the typos on her hands and knees and Grey is doling out the compensatory spankings, and both are as happy as larks in their mutually compatible neuroses --- that is, until love rears its head and things begin to get serious.

This is a very strange movie. Basically, it's total camp (note Spader's deadpan, whispery performance and the oddly stylized locations), but with a touch of genuine emotion. Unfortunately, I can't say that "Secretary"'s peculiar charm worked for me. I did have a few laughs and felt some interest in the fate of Lee and Grey, but it seemed as if there wasn't anywhere else to go once the relationship was set up with a few quirky S & M scenes. (The movie was adapted from a short story, so maybe there wasn't enough meat to the matter to sustain a whole film.) After Lee becomes engaged to her drippy boyfriend and instigates the climax to the story by running through the streets in her wedding gown, the movie becomes a weird hybrid of a Meg Ryan movie and a movie making fun of a Meg Ryan movie. If the intent was to skewer the standard storyline in which marriage is the ultimate symbol of eternal romantic bliss, I'd say that Shainberg has been beaten to the punch by Pedro Aldomovar in the much better "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down." If the intent was to show that these two disturbed creatures are perfect for each other and that fulfillment comes in all flavors, I'd say the goal was more or less obtained --- but it was a little too long in getting there.

Copyright © 2002 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.