The "Secretary Wanted" sign is a permanent fixture outside the law office of solo practitioner E. Edward Grey. Miss Lee Holloway, newly checked out of the psych ward, wanders in and lands the job. No sane woman would want it.
"Are you pregnant?" Grey asks outlandishly in the job interview. "Do you plan on getting pregnant?"
James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal star in "Secretary."
(Lions Gate)
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"Secretary," it soon becomes obvious, is a weird movie. It features self-mutilation, spanking, manacles and a worm – not the typical touchstones of a love story. Still, for all its outre sexual content, "Secretary" also turns out to be a fairly standard boy-girl relationship picture.
That is director Steven Shainberg's great accomplishment. Initially cold and perverse to its core, the film transmutes into something warm and uplifting. Normal, even.
Here's another pleasant surprise: Who knew that watching a creepy attorney (played by veteran creep James Spader) psychologically torment his vulnerable secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal) for an hour and a half could be so amusing?
Gyllenhaal, in her first lead role, is delightfully odd and erotic. She outshines Spader in a daring portrayal of a young woman with no job skills and a résumé of psychiatric hospitalizations – she's been slicing her own flesh since seventh grade. She stashes the cuticle scissors and other wounding instruments in a butterfly-decaled box under her bed and hides the scars with long, dowdy skirts.
Why does she desire pain? It's hard to say, but her dad's a drunk and her mom's a doormat. Yawn – even dysfunctional suburbanites have become stereotypes. The parents (Stephen McHattie and Lesley Ann Warren) are distractions here anyway, given the film's claustrophobic focus on Gyllenhaal and Spader, whose fetishes will of course turn out to be a perfect fit, but not at first.
A control freak, Grey gets off on insulting his new hire ("The way you dress is disgusting" . . . "Do you realize that you are always sniffling?") and makes her use a circa-1975 electric typewriter. Holloway's mistakes are punished with firm spankings, which unlock her sexual desire. But Grey, sadist that he is, withholds his affection.
Spader, no longer the young, freaky voyeur of "Sex, Lies and Videotape," is still handsome, but starting to take on that wizened, maniacal look of Christopher Walken. He lords over a baroquely decorated office, where he cultivates exotic orchids and also traps rodents. But Grey isn't all bad: He lets the mice free, a metaphor for how he liberates Holloway from her destructive compulsions.
"Secretary's" look and feel are reminiscent of mid-period David Lynch, more "Twin Peaks" than "Mulholland Drive." Here's a clue why: Director Shainberg cites Lynch's masterpiece, "Blue Velvet," as the first movie that made him want to watch movies.
For prudes, watching "Secretary" might be, well, painful. Best to avoid it. For others, the dialogue may seem slow and banal – "I feel more than I've ever felt, and I've found someone to feel with, to play with, to love, in a way that feels right to me," Holloway narrates – but the acting is especially sturdy. A flat black humor is poured over everything.
Based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill, "Secretary" won this year's Sundance Film Festival jury prize for originality. The script was so original that for years, producers shied away, confusing it with sleazy soft-core porn.
But "Secretary," with its pure Hollywood ending, is actually a picture with heart. You shouldn't leave feeling soiled or bruised. Just touched.
SECRETARY (R, 104 minutes) – Contains nudity, profanity, domination, submission and sexual situations. At area theaters.
