Sam Taylor-Johnson
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"Wuthering Heights" (2026)
Directed by Emerald Fennell
influenced by Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Themes
Did Wuthering Heights aim to be Fifty Shades of Brontë?
Compared to this, “Fifty Shades of Grey” looks like a chaste after school special.
Around that same time, another piece of Twilight-influenced media, Fifty Shades of Grey, dropped, and female-gaze smut made a resurgence in the mainstream.
It's shallow fan fiction that has more in common with E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey than Brontë's unflinching portrait of obsessive love, vengeance, the violence of class, racism and generational trauma.
There are certain aspects of Wuthering Heights, that seem very reminiscent of Fifty Shades of Grey in the way that desire, power, and kink intersect.
Fennell seems to be prodding us with the imagery of erotic submission that was once the purview of Harlequin romances but has now gone mainstream in the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey and the dawn of BookTok.
Despite citing Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris as a tonal touchstone, and nodding cheekily to American Gigolo/Psycho, the result smacks more of Adrian Lyne’s blandly naff 9½ Weeks, the S&M frankness of Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse usurped by the archaic softcore of Just Jaeckin’s The Story of O.
Although the book’s soft-X explicitness has been toned down to a hard R, this is the first studio film in many years to gaze directly at the Medusa of sex — and unlike such male-leer predecessors as 9½ Weeks, it does so from a woman’s perspective.
Now the film adaptation, likely the first of four films to be milked from James’ three books, is poised to lure people to movie theaters, just as previous exploitation gone mainstream films “9½ Weeks” and “Basic Instinct” did in decades past.
Glossy, well cast, and a consistent hoot until it becomes a serious drag, this neo-“9½ Weeks” is above all a slick exercise in carefully brand-managed titillation — edgier than most grown-up studio fare, but otherwise a fairly mild provocation in this porn-saturated day and age.
“9½ Weeks” was more inflammatory, and “Blue Velvet” was more dangerous and disturbing.
Last Tango in Paris (1972)
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
influenced Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Themes
Despite citing Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris as a tonal touchstone, and nodding cheekily to American Gigolo/Psycho, the result smacks more of Adrian Lyne’s blandly naff 9½ Weeks, the S&M frankness of Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse usurped by the archaic softcore of Just Jaeckin’s The Story of O.
Dornan could have answered, “Have you seen The Story of O.?” Anyone who’s old enough to remember the old fear and hysteria caused by S&M movies like Luis Buñuel’s Belle du Jour and Tim Blake Nelson’s O and Adrian Lyne’s Nine 1/2 Weeks; or anyone who’s seen Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, and the trashily vicious Color of Night; or anyone who’s watched Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader in the imperfectly exciting Secretary, or watched Girls’s audacious second season or any year of Sex and the City is likely to leave Fifty Shades of Grey perplexed by its uncontroversial mildness.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1998)
Directed by Ian Sharp
influenced Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Themes
Though Ana’s read Tess of the d’Urbervilles, she’s somehow remained innocent of any knowledge of love as pain—indeed, innocent of any knowledge at all, though she’s a fast study.
She connects that trait to her field of study, although, given how she mumbles the title Tess of the d'Urbervilles, we start to wonder whether her education has paid off in any meaningful way.
It’s almost eerie how much she reminds you of her mother, Melanie Griffith, especially given the similarities between “Fifty Shades” and “Working Girl,” which was also about a mousy woman learning to assert herself in the company of a stinking-rich suitor.
What’s nice about the negotiation scene is how much Johnson evokes Griffith creating her own angles in Working Girl, in which Griffith’s screwball-dingbat delivery belied great reserves of self-confidence.
Twilight (2008)
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
influenced Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Characters Themes
Dornan plays Christian Grey as icy and one-note (true to its Robert Pattinson/ Twilight inspiration) and Johnson's Anastasia Steele is a revelation, a mumbling, awkward comedic presence on par with Kristen Wiig.
“Fifty Shades of Grey” began in emulation of Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, whose plausible spiritual lessons are closer to the surface.
Like the character who inspired her, Twilight ’s Bella Swan, I expected Ana to be meek and featureless and utterly passive, a blank, empty vessel for readers’ and viewers’ sexual and romantic longings.
5. James (real name: Erika Mitchell) tweaked the Twilight teen virgin Bella Swan into the slightly older Anastasia, and reimagined sensitive vampire Edward as the well-mannered sadist Christian.
Grey, a vaguely defined "businessman," is an unconvincing mix of Regency aristocrat and high-school hunk, while Anastasia is another Bella Swan ("Twilight"), though with even bigger daddy issues.
As with the first “Twilight” movie back in 2008, the one directed with canny, low-key commitment by Catherine Hardwicke, James’ book has been de-crudified, its most operatic expressions of lust stricken from the record.
Pretty Woman (1990)
Directed by Garry Marshall
influenced Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Themes Characters Plot
Fifty Shades is best compared to 1990’s Pretty Woman.
Not since Richard Gere in "Pretty Woman" has there been such a fantasy catch for the women in the audience - as well as Ana.
Aside from the BDSM material that doesn't really show its head until fairly well into the film, the story comes off somewhat like a fairly lame version of "Pretty Woman" and a far less interesting look at the world of kinky sex than occurred in "Secretary" (with Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader).
A successful male control freak who’s compelled by an emotionally pure woman to open himself up is the basis for thousands of romances and is far less disturbing in its implications than, say, Pretty Woman, that launching pad for American Sweetheart Julia Roberts in which the prince purchases his princess on the open market.
What obviously comes to mind is Pretty Woman, in which Richard Gere’s antisocial businessman decides to make Julia Roberts’s prostitute The One. Fifty Shades of Grey takes 125 minutes to do what that movie did in its first dozen or so scenes.
The way this film works its archetypes is reasonably clever, though I would point out that Pretty Woman worked exactly the same way 24 years and 11 months ago.
Basic Instinct (1992)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
influenced Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Visuals Plot Themes
The handling of the BDSM sex play is dreadfully cliched in terms of structure (3 heated romps and a final dramatic one); however, the actual presentation of the “love scenes” recalls the style of director Adrian Lyne (Unfaithful, Nine 1/2 Weeks), favoring artsy close-ups of human form, curve and the intimate sensations of touch, feel and response, rather than the raw carnality seen in something like Basic Instinct (my generation’s landmark erotic thriller movie).
Dakota Johnson, playing Anastasia, is asked to bare a little more skin, though nothing that will register on the pop culture Richter scale like Sharon Stone’s leg-uncrossing in Basic Instinct.
The sex scenes in “Basic Instinct” are rawer and sexier than anything here, and as a result Christian comes off as the most lightweight dominant in the history of BDSM.
This isn't the next Basic Instinct; it's the next Sliver.
Now the film adaptation, likely the first of four films to be milked from James’ three books, is poised to lure people to movie theaters, just as previous exploitation gone mainstream films “9½ Weeks” and “Basic Instinct” did in decades past.
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
influenced Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Themes
The novel is very likely the worst-written international bestseller since the “Twilight” series and maybe since, once upon a time in the same kingdom of forbidden love, “The Bridges of Madison County.”
It’s no Clint Eastwood’s superheroic saving of “The Bridges of Madison County,” but it’ll do.
Despite citing Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris as a tonal touchstone, and nodding cheekily to American Gigolo/Psycho, the result smacks more of Adrian Lyne’s blandly naff 9½ Weeks, the S&M frankness of Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse usurped by the archaic softcore of Just Jaeckin’s The Story of O.
It’s all worlds away from the darker rooms of bondage classicism: the ritual torments of The Story of O and the troubling compulsions of Nine and a Half Weeks.
Dornan could have answered, “Have you seen The Story of O.?” Anyone who’s old enough to remember the old fear and hysteria caused by S&M movies like Luis Buñuel’s Belle du Jour and Tim Blake Nelson’s O and Adrian Lyne’s Nine 1/2 Weeks; or anyone who’s seen Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, and the trashily vicious Color of Night; or anyone who’s watched Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader in the imperfectly exciting Secretary, or watched Girls’s audacious second season or any year of Sex and the City is likely to leave Fifty Shades of Grey perplexed by its uncontroversial mildness.
American Psycho (2000)
Directed by Mary Harron
influenced Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Visuals Characters Themes
Otherwise they make a curiously uninteresting pair, with Johnson overdoing the trembling lower lip while Dornan musters little beyond an icy stare and slight smirk, though he is quite a clothes horse, as an opening scene set in his elegant walk-in closet, somewhat reminiscent of “American Psycho,” demonstrates.
Christian Grey is basically the Patrick Bateman (“American Psycho”) of sex, to the point where “American Psycho” author Bret Easton Ellis saw so much of Patrick in Christian that he actually begged “Grey” author E. L. James for the right to write the film’s screenplay.
(It’s a shame, though, that American Psycho-era Christian Bale was not available to give it a try.)
Dornan gives us a stony, domineering, self-obsessed Christian - a monster not far removed from Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho (memorably played on film by Christian Bale).
I suppose that would be fine if the film at least generated some sort of sexual heat or was instead a blackly comic deconstruction of its source material, along the lines of Mary Harron’s American Psycho.
Compared, inaccurately to Fifty Shades of Grey , the movie franchise based on the book that came out just before #MeToo could cause too many eyebrow raises about its nature, 365 Days is more Beauty and the Beast meets Pretty Woman (back when it was a script called $3,000 ) in terms of themes and plot, yet draws the comparison to E.L. James’ erotic-by-Midwestern-housewife-standards books because of its often sadomasochistic sex scenes centered on withholding and delayed pleasure.
Heavily inspired by the common plots of adult thrillers such as “Fifty Shades of Grey,” “365 Days” is another tale of a dominant man who falls head over heels in love with the girl of his dreams (literally).
Positioning itself as Polish cinema’s answer to the Fifty Shades of Grey book and film series, author Blanka Lipinska’s 365 Days (365 dni) is adapted by filmmaker Barbara Bialowas.
This is a laughable “Fifty Shades of Grey” kidnapping porn mafia picture — softcore, of course — about a hunky Sicilian mob boss (Michele Morrone) who spies a beautiful tourist on the day his father is assassinated.
It is so bad it makes Fifty Shades of Grey look like Last Tango in Paris .
However, the film quickly gained international recognition due to its explicit sex scenes and inevitable comparison to Fifty Shades Of Grey .
Despite citing Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris as a tonal touchstone, and nodding cheekily to American Gigolo/Psycho, the result smacks more of Adrian Lyne’s blandly naff 9½ Weeks, the S&M frankness of Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse usurped by the archaic softcore of Just Jaeckin’s The Story of O.
In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
Directed by Nagisa Ōshima
influenced Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Themes
Obviously there are scenes from the book that were never going to pass muster here, most notoriously a sex act involving a feminine hygiene product that would have been right at home in Nagisa Oshima’s 1976 arthouse scandal, “In the Realm of the Senses”; certainly there’s nothing here to compare with the much more grim and unyielding portrait of female self-debasement in Lars von Trier’s recent “Nymphomaniac.”
Many combinations were suggested, my own preference being Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, who made such a lovely couple in “The Prince of Tides,” but in the end the lucky winners were Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson.
Griffith boarded the express train to a sort of movie stardom with a contract-negotiation scene in the most cockamamie of Brian De Palma’s cubist Hitchcock tributes, 1984’s Body Double.
When the screenplay reveals that Christian was abused as a teenager by an older woman – references to Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” abound – an interesting pop-psychological framework comes into focus.
Secretary (2002)
Directed by Steven Shainberg
influenced Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Characters Themes Plot
Whilst the character of the submissive ingénue is hardly unfamiliar in literature or contemporary cinema (Steven Shainberg’s 2002 film Secretary based on Mary Gaitskill’s novel Bad Behaviour, springs to mind) the success of James’ novels has piqued such intense global interest in the film that its cultural significance cannot be underestimated.
One of the good things about the Fifty Shades fever is that it has made lots of people dig up Steven Shainberg’s 2002 film Secretary and pointed out all the ways it’s superior to the current movie.
Allow me to join the chorus of critics who have recommended that you check out a smarter, kinkier and all-around better BDSM romance this weekend and rent 2002’s “Secretary.”
Aside from the BDSM material that doesn't really show its head until fairly well into the film, the story comes off somewhat like a fairly lame version of "Pretty Woman" and a far less interesting look at the world of kinky sex than occurred in "Secretary" (with Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader).
Over a decade ago, Steven Shainberg's "Secretary" bested "Fifty Shades of Grey" by using its setting to explore the intersection of private and personal experiences on modern sexuality.
The Fifty Shades phenomenon (and that would include the three novels in E.L. James’s trilogy plus this film and its already-in-the-works sequels) may have courted controversy for its exploration of a dom-sub relationship, but Story of O (or even Secretary , for that matter) this is not.
Nothing comes close to Michael Douglas and Glenn Close humping on the kitchen sink in “ Fatal Attraction ” or Marlon Brando ’s inventive use of butter with Maria Schneider in “The Last Tango in Paris.”
They are, if anything, less risqué than such long-ago, R-rated staples as 9 ½ Weeks or Fatal Attraction.
Despite citing Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris as a tonal touchstone, and nodding cheekily to American Gigolo/Psycho, the result smacks more of Adrian Lyne’s blandly naff 9½ Weeks, the S&M frankness of Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse usurped by the archaic softcore of Just Jaeckin’s The Story of O.