Steven Shainberg
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But Shainberg does include a reference to The Shining —the iconic Overlook Hotel carpet pattern as wallpaper—to show that he is aware of the existence of better movies that share little with Rupture apart from a nebulous genre and a theme of isolation.
The wallpaper, reminiscent of The Shining carpet pattern, is a creepy yet welcomed touch.
It aims for The Shining, but ends up feeling more like a Syfy TV show.
Chloe (2010)
Directed by Atom Egoyan
influenced by Secretary (2002), Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
Atom Egoyan and his screenwriter, Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Fur ) are keen to impress on us how very enigmatic and mysterious the bond is between Catherine and Chloe.
Chloe is a remake of the 2004 French film Nathalie, and is the first of Mr. Egoyan’s films (The Sweet Hereafter and last year’s Adoration) that he didn’t write himself (Erin Cressida Wilson, who penned Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ode to spanking in Secretary, gets credit).
Not quite, although Erin Cressida Wilson’s (Secretary) script, based on the 2003 film Nathalie…, can’t quite manage that film’s self-possessed, quintessentially French combination of sang froid and simmering melodrama.
"Chloe" is based on a French film, adapted by screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson ("Secretary"), but it's right up Egoyan's alley as if he'd written it himself, a twisted tale of obsession and unexplained desire.
Working from a screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson ("Secretary"), Egoyan doesn't flinch from exploring the dark side of curiosity.
What really pushes “Chloe” from being just another failed remake of a movie that was perfectly good as it was into the realm of all-out, what-were-they-thinking? Disaster, though, is the adaptation of Fontaine’s original screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson, best-known for her screenplay for the fairly overrated kinkfest “Secretary.”
The American debut of kind-to-be-cruel South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (“Old Boy,” “Lady Vengeance”), based on a script by the actor Wentworth Miller (“Prison Break”) with rewrites by Erin Cressida Wilson (“Secretary”) is a brisk, chilly variation on themes in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt,” but it never finds a convincing shape of its own.
The script for the film was written by none other than Prison Break and Resident Evil 4 star Wentworth Miller – with some obvious contributions by Secretary writer Erin Cressida Wilson.
The screenplay—written by first-timer Wentworth Miller but worked over by the kinky Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Chloe)—is a sexualized take on Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943).
But for my money, this movie belongs alongside “Secretary,” “Ginger Snaps” and “Thirteen” in the family of deliciously dark female coming-of-age stories.
And finally, it was the first American multiplex film to feature S&M (unless Secretary counts?)—and while it was never quite as grandly kinky as one might’ve hoped, let’s just say it was soft-core-porn adjacent.
The 2002 film " Secretary ," also about a dom-sub relationship involving a Mr. Grey, portrayed fear, desire, humor, simultaneously.
A subversive foray into kink à la Secretary ?
But if the first Shades felt like a slicker, glossier, but far less fun version of 2002's Secretary , then this feels closer to The Blacklist , with Johnson's Anastasia led in and out trouble by the dominant Red, sorry Grey.
It’s all wrong!”; regrettably, she doesn’t get up and leave for a much better kinky movie (like maybe Secretary or Belle de Jour ), where she can get what she obviously craves without her choice of master making our collective stomachs crawl.
As the two continue to talk, such concepts as 'love equals lust plus jealousy' are introduced, especially when Joe continues to run into Jerome (in one instance recalling Steven Shainberg's S&M romance "Secretary") and finds herself 'in love.' Seligman is astounded by Joe's answer to his question about which hand's nails she cuts first, his measure of whether a person is light-hearted or serious.
Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson
influenced by Secretary (2002)
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.
For a good hour or so, the film plays along in the vein of “Happiness” and “Welcome To The Dollhouse,” cutting a quirky, captivating style, yet never losing sight of the darkness of the material.
Brooding amidst all the pop-art is an Angelo Badalamenti score that is as eerie and planetary as he contributed to Blue Velvet or Holy Smoke.
What emerges is more or less akin to the torture porn tendencies of Hostel (2005), or Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs (2008), which infamously depicts a group of bored elitists who mercilessly torture people in order to witness the ultimate ascension to martyrdom.
It feels like Panic Room, Saw, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Hostel got thrown into a blender with some neon food coloring to make it look like a Nicolas Winding Refn movie but with none of the frights or style.
Although it earns comparisons to other S&M or sexual compulsion narratives such as Secretary (2002) or Shame (2011), this isn't a film about despair or disgrace.
For a good hour or so, the film plays along in the vein of “Happiness” and “Welcome To The Dollhouse,” cutting a quirky, captivating style, yet never losing sight of the darkness of the material.
What emerges is more or less akin to the torture porn tendencies of Hostel (2005), or Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs (2008), which infamously depicts a group of bored elitists who mercilessly torture people in order to witness the ultimate ascension to martyrdom.
Hyde’s movie doesn’t have the appreciation or the genius for the chaos of other quirky sort-of-rom-coms like Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet or Steven Shainberg’s Secretary .
When her captors turn into shape-shifting alien creatures reminiscent of “Sloth” from “The Goonies,” it’s really hard to emotionally sympathize with her situation.
"Why not?" replies Lee with a playful smile that makes the line almost as giddy and liberating as Joe E. Brown's immortal response to Jack Lemmon at the end of Some Like It Hot.
In case it isn’t already obvious, Reitman, who co-wrote the script with Erin Cressida Wilson ("Chloe," "Fur," "Secretary") wants to make it clear that there is so much to discover and appreciate about our existence, you just have to log off and look at the stars or at the person in front of you.
The subject of technological tyranny in ordinary lives isn’t quite as compelling as the filmmakers may think, and Reitman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary) sometimes skim reads the movie’s characters and situations.
In adapting Chad Kultgen’s 2011 novel, which introduced itself with a chapter-one riff on Kelly Ripa’s anus, Jason Reitman and his co-writer Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary) manage to be both prudish and eye-rollingly vulgar.
The uncommonly perceptive script by Reitman and Erin Cressida Wilson (“Secretary”) — adapted from a novel by Chad Kultgen — isn’t afraid to go to some very dark places.
Here, Reitman enlisted as co-writer Erin Cressida Wilson, whose previous feature films ( Secretary , Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus and Chloe) dealt with sexual kinks, to lend authority to a synoptic take on a society drenched in virtual venery.
Unfortunately, the ongoing dysfunction of her family is like that of Mike Nichols�s The Graduate in overdrive, and Lee�s quick resort to a concealed sewing kit of sharp-edged objects suggests she�s a long way from being cured.
In feeling, the film has been likened to Rebecca and Gaslight but it is more in keeping with Steven Shainberg’s Secretary , in which two people with rather niche proclivities, shall we say, find what works for them.
Fawned at and pawed on, thanks to what the scientists consider to be unique properties of her skin (conjuring the essence of Venus Xtravaganza from Paris is Burning ), it becomes clear Renee has been injected with something, and the screams from other prisoners throughout the compound allows her to deduce she will be forced to face her darkest fears in order to undergo a ‘rupture.’
From Barbet Schoeder’s Maîtresse (1975) to Steven Shainberg’s Secretary (2002), David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996) to Stuart Urban’s Preaching to the Perverted (1997), there’s a veritable rainbow of different ways that sexual pleasure, consent, and power play has manifested across film history.