Secretary

TIFF [2002]

Capsule Review Only Our full coverage and more indepth reviews will be published after the Festival has ended Receive email when this page changes

(2002, USA)
Cast: Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Spader, Jeremy Davies, Lesley Ann Warren, Stephen McHattie
Screenplay by: Steve Shainberg and Erin Cressida Wilson, based upon a short story by Mary Gaitskill
Directed by: Steven Shainberg
Distributor: Lions Gate Films

So what we have here is a “feel good” romantic comedy about S&M. And why not? —the Toronto International Film Festival is all about anachronisms. Sure, Gary Marshall attempted a similarly-themed experiment with 1994’s execrable Anne Rice adaptation “Exit to Eden” (Rosie O’Donnell in a dog collar—I still can’t get that image out of my head), and while “Secretary” does feature a literal “runaway bride”, let’s just say that Julia Roberts has yet display the kind of fearlessness shown by Maggie Gyllenhaal in her lead debut.

Talk Back

Gyllenhaal (yes, Jake’s sister) is the star attraction as ex-mental patient Lee Holloway, released on the very day of her oh-so-perfect sister’s wedding. It doesn’t take long before the company of her alcoholic, newly-unemployed father (McHattie) and peroxide-Mad-Housewife mother (Warren) drives Lee back into the seclusion of her room to engage in her preferred coping device: self-mutilation. When Lee, with no previous employment history and only some impressive typing scores as “experience”, lands a job immediately at the low-tech law firm of E. Edward Grey (Spader), she finds a kindred spirit for her personal philosophy of pain-as-catharsis, but neither person’s respective bents are immediately obvious. A domineering basket case with a history of failed personal and professional relationships, Grey wields his red correction marker like a bullwhip. He finds his pleasure in berating and eventually physically punishing Lee over the most menial of “offenses” (typos, excessive sniffling) giving way to shame and even impotence as his apparent subordinate seems to get off on having her boss control every aspect of her life, from the length of her breaks to the number of peas on her dinner plate. Lee replaces the life-rush of her self-inflicted wounds with those from Grey, taking pride in her slave role as if it were a professional duty. Of course, Lee’s strange relationship soon spills beyond office hours, inviting the unwanted interventions of her parents and ersatz high school boyfriend Peter (Davies, channeling Steve Zahn).

A too tidy and “cutesy” coda mars what is otherwise an amusing, perversely charming “one-roomer” in which Gyllenhaal and Spader spar to gain the dominating role in a love affair in which the definitions of master and slave become increasingly foggy. As the self-loathing sadist Grey, Spader revels in playing another of his patented moody ciphers, although here his large Keaneian eyes seem to pop out of his head against a gaunt, pale face and broken demeanor securing him a potential future as the successor to Christopher Walken.

Imagine “Working Girl” meets “Justine” by the Marquis De Sade and decide if “Secretary” fits within your own personal pain threshold when it reaches North American theatres later this month.

- Robert L

Talk Back