September 20, 2002 | Sitting through Secretary is a bit like watching an explosives expert defuse a bomb. A great deal of your appreciation for what you’re seeing is fueled by your awareness that, at any moment, the whole thing could blow up in somebody’s face.
Consider this: The movie, smoothly directed by Steven Shainberg and precisely written by Erin Cressida Wilson, deals with a self-loathing young woman who is driven to acts of painful self-mutilation, who doesn’t find happiness until she becomes a spank-happy submissive to her dominating lawyer boss.
And, oh, by the way: The movie is a comedy.
Maggie Gyllenhaal, an untraditionally but arrestingly attractive actress, plays Lee Holloway, the title character, and it’s not overstating the case to say that many other actresses – including quite a few famous ones – have enjoyed long and successful careers without ever rising to the challenge of an equally demanding role.
During the opening scenes, as Lee is dropped back into the toxic bosom of her dysfunctional family after a lengthy stay in a mental hospital, Gyllenhaal lays uncontestable claim to our sympathy without overplaying a single line or overselling a single gesture. But wait, there’s more.
After Lee goes to work as a legal secretary for the amusingly repressed Mr. Grey (James Spader), Gyllenhaal’s performance becomes increasingly more compelling, more complex, as she gracefully maneuvers through her character’s variegations of emotional response and psychological evolution. She runs the gamut from laugh-out-loud hilarity to heart-in-mouth anxiety – sometimes, within the space of a single scene – without ever making a false move. To put it simply, and admiringly, she is nothing short of mesmerizing.
If this reads more like a mash note than a film review, that’s partially because Gyllenhaal’s performance, like the movie that contains it, relies at least partially on the element of surprise. And I don’t want to undermine the impact of either the performance or the film itself by spilling too many beans. Wilson’s script, adapted from a short story by Mary Gaitskill, is meticulously logical and persuasive as it goes about the business of moving from Point A to Point B, and then to Point C, and so on. It’s only when you get to – oh, I dunno, maybe Point H, or Point I, that you’re fully aware of just how far off the beaten path you’ve been carried. Secretary goes to extremes, but it takes slow, purposeful steps to get there.
At times, James Spader appears to be channeling Christopher Walken while playing Mr. Grey, Lee’s demanding boss, but that’s probably what the role requires. And even if it doesn’t, Spader does a fine job of making the stylized shtick work. There’s an undeniable heat generated during many of his scenes with Gyllenhaal — especially during the first spanking sequence, which begins as a shockingly funny joke, then slowly turns into a celebration of transgressively swoony eroticism while the laughter catches in our throats.
Here and elsewhere, Secretary slyly undercuts conventional ideas about who is the master, and who is the mastered, in the type of relationship shared by the two central characters. The provocatively ambiguous ending suggests that, maybe, what might seem like submission of self really is more like assertion of control. Power, like so many other facets of life and love, is the eye of the beholder.
By the way: The MPAA has given Secretary an R rating “for strong sexuality, some nudity, depiction of behavioral disorders and language.” Consider yourself warned
