Secretary (2002)
Directed by Steven Shainberg
A young woman, recently released from a mental hospital, gets a job as a secretary to a demanding lawyer, where their employer-employee relationship turns into a sexual, sadomasochistic one.
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12 films that influenced Secretary
What critics say influenced Secretary
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.
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.
"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.
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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 essence, Secretary takes you into the same murky corner of the human libido that French director Catherine Breillat's R-rated film Romance explored a couple of years ago, although Shainberg is not nearly as solemn about his findings.
And all this without the reactive, dogmatic postures of satires like Spike Lee's Bamboozled , which pillory their chosen targets so ardently that too little energy remains for offering a coherent new alternative.
Edward harbors a collection of red Sharpie markers, one of which attains primacy over the others by nesting in a bronze, horn-shaped cradle, which itself looks like a torture appurtenance from Dead Ringers.
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But Shainberg's given us something like The Piano Teacher with yuks, which sounds like one of those joke ideas from the first scene of The Player.
Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lee Holloway, a young woman who, since childhood, has used various forms of self-mutilation to cope with the pain of growing up with an alcoholic dad (Stephen McHattie) and a Stepford mom (Lesley Ann Warren) in a Florida suburb that looks like a leftover set from Edward Scissorhands.