Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is released from a mental health facility and into the care of her well-meaning but dogmatic parents. She dates a mild-mannered man named Peter (Jeremy Davies) and functions well enough in the world, but she finds it artificial and strange until she finds a job as a secretary for E. Edward Grey (James Spader), an attorney who runs a tight ship and has little tolerance for incompetence. At first, she has trouble adjusting to her stern boss, but soon enough she enters into a symbiotic submissive rapport with his natural dominance. Their relationship is qualified by SM 101<\/em> author Jay Wiseman as sadomasochistic (S&M for short), specifically, \u201creferring generally to fantasies and experiences regarding the introduction of domination, submission, bondage, sadism, masochism, humiliation, and related activities into erotic play\u201d and beyond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A key sequence in Secretary<\/em> establishes the dynamic entire. After finding a typo in a letter he dictated to Lee, Grey instructs her to place her palms on the table and to read the letter aloud. During the reading, Grey proceeds to spank his secretary to the point of sexual exhaustion. Following the tightrope-taut moment, an insert shows Lee gently stroking Grey\u2019s hand with a feather-light graze. The connection is more than physical; Lee indicates that she drew value from the exchange and enjoyed it. This blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it moment is paramount to understanding her willingness to participate in Grey\u2019s sessions. Later, Lee quietly but assuredly prepares a dinner plate for herself according to her boss\u2019 strict specifications: a scoop of creamed potatoes, a slice of butter, four green peas, and \u201cas much ice cream as you\u2019d like to eat.\u201d The moment doesn\u2019t come off as disconcerting so much as it identifies with and understands her need for control\u2014her orgasmic eyes as she hears his instructions say it all. This need is not involuntary, it is merely looking for the<\/em> properly-qualified, firm hand to enclose her own. Further, the need isn\u2019t only for Grey\u2019s pleasure, as he demonstrates by talking to Lee about her self-harm and commands her to never cut herself again. The \u201cNo, Sir\u201d that follows his \u201cWill you?\u201d is the most confident assertion that she utters up to that point in the film\u2014 through kink, Lee blossoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At one point, Mr. Grey\u2019s ex-lover lets off a volley of shade and calls Lee \u201csubmissive,\u201d which the demure assistant answers by unleashing her assertiveness at a telemarketer, highlighting a monumental cornerstone of the dom\/sub dynamic: the dominant partner does not take control, the submissive partner willingly relinquishes it. By putting Lee at the helm of her own sexuality and showing her choosing when and how to be tough, the film avoids the routine portraiture of a damaged, buxom deviant who non-consensually endures pain and degradation in order to \u201cearn\u201d love. Grey doesn\u2019t get to place a saddle and head harness on his partner because he just wants to; Lee trusts and permits him to do so, and she stands tall within the power dynamic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within that relationship Lee is a complex, walking subversion of the male gaze, both visually and functionally. Donning flowy long-sleeve blouses and snug but modest pencil skirts, Lee does not need to be presented as a sexual object in order to present herself as a sexual creature. For starters, the casting of Maggie Gyllenhaal, a brunette with little of the come-hither Lolita-ness seen in erotic genre pictures like Mario Bava\u2019s The Whip and The Body<\/em> (best described as a Bronte tale with whips and bondage), is a stellar choice in bringing an authentic, fleshed-out femme character to life. Her wide, ever-expressive eyes shoot daggers and roses alike with ease, ensuring that her bewilderment and enjoyment come through whenever the dialogue doesn\u2019t make her feelings explicit. There\u2019s an active agency in her sexualization that shines the brightest in her insistence upon maintaining the relationship and all that it entails, not in nude scenes or sensationalized kink play. One of the most beautiful scenes, in fact, is of Lee fantasizing about her partner and masturbating, clothed in an old fashioned knee-length nightgown, laying on her stomach<\/em> like many vagina-having people do! As she climaxes she exclaims, \u201cI\u2019m your secretary!\u201d and lists the items he instructed her to eat at dinner earlier. It\u2019s not the foods that get her off\u2014it\u2019s the dominion she lets him hold over her. The nudity that does come about is delicate, as Grey provides aftercare and quietly bathes his partner. As the story unfolds, the heroine comes into her own, not from porn-esque skin and sin, but as the direct result of finding a partner who gets her as much as she gets him. Their relatability, while non-traditional, provides safe harbor in the cold, fake world they both inhabit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this isn\u2019t to say that Lee craves abuse; far from it. One of the biggest hurdles to the success of the narrative lies in respectfully navigating Lee\u2019s mental illness and coping methods. Her institutionalization is prompted by self-harm; she cuts herself when her world becomes overwhelming. A lesser storyteller might conflate that self-harm with a desire to be anyone and everyone\u2019s doormat, but instead Shainberg takes pains to put Lee\u2019s agency on display. Her typos, previously punishable by spanking and humiliation, become intentional in a bratty attempt to get her spankings when she wants them. She places worms alongside her assigned work to earn the discipline she craves from him, and it is solely him that she wants. She breaks things off with her less sadistically-inclined man and her attempts at dating other dominant men fall flat because she considers Grey to be the only one who has earned the immeasurable trust that is built within a healthy S\/M relationship. As Wiseman points out in his book, many submissive are \u201cparticular\u201d about the type of pain they revel in, only allowing it \u201cunder controlled, consensual circumstances.\u201d For Lee, Mr. Grey knows how to walk that line while maintaining his dominance and still showering tenderness upon his lady.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Secretary<\/em> not a perfect representation of the dom\/sub kink. The pair\u2019s no-nos include a failure to establish consent and scope before letting the spanking hand fly, and a moment of assault. When Grey tries to set boundaries by instilling a no-contact rule and firing his employee, she gives his cheek a more powerful slap than any that had previously landed on her backside. While the story has its imperfect depictions, it certainly cuts a better silhouette than a certain other series of media starring another, more \u201cshady\u201d Mr. Grey. A gentle reading can call it all collateral damage in the campaign to invert gender norms, which is bound to get messy as it unpacks and interrogates the roles we play with and for each other. With Secretary<\/em>, Shainberg crafts a fresh, singular sketch of the complexities of sex, love, and power as they relate to women. “Secretary” is currently streaming on Peacock<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/secretary2-1024x576.png\")
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