Calling the shots: Secretary reviewed in 2003

To the accompaniment of a sinuously seductive score (courtesy of Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch’s favourite composer), a smartly dressed secretary moves elegantly around a plush office, collecting pages from a copier, stapling them together, pouring a cup of coffee and heading off down the corridor with coffee and documents. All this is accomplished gracefully and smoothly – despite the fact that her arms are pinioned out horizontally, strapped into a bondage yoke. Then cut to: “Six months earlier…”

So begins Secretary, a rare example of a mainstream English-language movie that tackles the edgy subject of erotic submission without prurience or mockery. Without solemnity, too. Like most sexual activities, SM is often funny, and in his second feature film (his first was the Jim Thompson adaptation Hit Me – are we seeing a theme here?) Steven Shainberg never shies away from the humour of his subject. At one point we find his heroine Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) on all fours with a saddle on her back, a pose familiar from a famous photo by Helmut Newton. Except that Gyllenhaal, unlike Newton’s model, has her teeth clamped round a huge carrot, its foliage still intact. For obvious reasons she can’t grin, but her eyes are full of laughter.

Much of the humour can be credited to screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson, since there’s precious little in the film’s source material, cult author Mary Gaitskill’s short story (Gaitskill’s lawyer, Lee’s boss, is a sad sleazebag, with nothing ofJames Spader’s insidious charm). The relationship between Spader and Gyllenhaal, the core of the film, is played out in terms of shifting body language. Initially Lee is awkward and inept, her glances full of sidelong unease; she clumps around in black moccasins, sniffing unhappily and fiddling with the ends of her hair. After her erotic awakening her back straightens, her stride lengthens, her voice deepens and her glance becomes direct. Meanwhile Spader, at first the embodiment of crisp command, seems to become infected with her erstwhile diffidence, making little ineffectual movements with his hands, backing away from her ardour with panic in his eyes and taking refuge behind his desk.

In essence, of course, this is a familiar movie trajectory: a timid, insecure heroine who through a sudden miraculous insight gains poise and confidence, overcomes the obstacles in her path and finally achieves true love and happiness. The audacity of Shainberg’s film lies in the nature of that revelatory insight and the way it’s treated. Lee’s spanking by her boss is presented not as abuse but as liberation, superbly mirrored in Gyllenhaal’s facial reactions: shock, amazement, pain, mixed with dawning delight and acceptance. She goes home and drops her self-cutting kit of knives and razorblades into a lake, knowing she’ll never need them again. She’s been shown the nature of her own sexuality, and in pursuing it she asserts herself for the first time in her life. As so often, it’s the so-called submissive who’s calling the shots.

Shainberg plays teasing games around the edges of reality, leaving us to guess whether certain episodes – the more outré bondage games, Lee’s three-day sit-in at Grey’s desk – should be taken literally or as part of her fantasy. A few elements and characters feel underdeveloped, in particular the paralegal who puts in fleeting appearances around the office without contributing anything to the story. But essentially this is a two-hander, with Spader and Gyllenhaal (in her first starring role) playing off each other superbly. Other characters are largely two-dimensional, though Jeremy Davies brings a sweet-natured bemusement to his role as Lee’s uncomprehending boyfriend, a guy whose idea of romance is to take his girl to dinner at the Laundromat. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asks anxiously after a bout of imagination-free sex. Lee stares into space, her gaze signalling, “If only…”.