Bondage, sex, and monsters

Whenever a prestigious juried film festival invents a special prize, everyone should
take notice. Michael Moore’s Bowling For
Columbine was the first documentary allowed to play at Cannes in over four
decades, and it was so impressive, the jury created an award for it to win. In
other cases, special award recipients have much darker undertones, like David
Cronenberg’s Crash or the brand-new Secretary,
which took home a Special Jury Prize for its “originality” at this
year’s Sundance fest.

            Now, the average Joe, upon learning
that the film is about the deviant sexual relationship between a boss and his
employee (and it stars Crash‘s James
Spader, too), would probably assume that Secretary is a completely over-the-top look at the practice of BDSM, and that it is full
of graphic sex. But it isn’t over-the-top or full of graphic sex, and that
makes the film either extremely cool or a complete letdown, depending on your
level of comfort with the whole spanking thing.

            Secretary takes place in Florida and opens with Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) happily
parading around an office in some kind of bondage yoke. The gear doesn’t seem
to impede her ability to perform her job, as she swishes around to Angelo
Badalamenti’s hip score.

            This, we soon find out, is really
the end of the story, as the rest plays out in a long, narrated flashback that
begins six months earlier, on the day Lee was sprung from the nuthouse. She’s a
cutter and a burner, no doubt as a result of her Norman Rockwell family life,
which includes drunk Dad (Stephen McHattie) and overbearing Mom (Lesley Ann
Warren). Making matters worse are Lee’s sister’s (Amy Locane) wedding, which is
taking place the very day Lee comes home, as well as the constant wooing of an
old boyfriend (Jeremy Davies), who has a whole slew of mental problems all his
own.

            When it becomes clear the situation
at home will only perpetuate her cutting and burning, Lee decides to get a job.
The only thing she knows how to do is type, so she lands on the doorstep of E.
Edward Grey, a local attorney who can only be described as “Spaderesque.”
Failing to take note of either the neon “Secretary wanted” sign that
can be turned on and off like a hotel vacancy sign, or the previous holder of
the job fleeing the office in tears, Lee is overly eager to land the position,
even though Grey warns her she’ll be bored out of her skull.

            A few typographical errors later,
Grey has Lee bent over his desk while he smacks the hell out of her ass. But
she likes it, and starts making errors on purpose. As the two get more and more
into it, the bigger the stakes get, so to speak. She’s a self-loathing wacko
and he’s a shy egomaniac — it’s a match made in BDSM heaven! Before long,
Grey is controlling everything in Lee’s life, right down to the number of peas
she has for dinner. But eventually the wheels fall off, and both characters suffer.

            If this is an accurate portrayal of
BDSM, it seems like a bit of a bore — but I think that’s the point. These are
normal (well, fairly normal) people with one particular hang-up (or two). We’re
laughing, but not at the characters. Because of the special Sundance award, you
expect something really sick to happen that never does. Then again, your
mileage may vary. To put it simply, your enjoyment of Secretary hinges on the answer to this question: Is it demeaning to
women because it shows a man of power getting off while he slaps a lowly
secretary’s dumper, or is it empowering because she’s really getting what she
wants? On the other hand, if you’re simply looking for a wholesome BDSM love
story, you needn’t bother with the question.

            We’ve seen Spader in this kind of
role so many times, it doesn’t even phase us anymore how adept he is at being
creepy. Gyllenhaal (she’s Jake’s sister) steals the show, both by default and
because her performance is notably strong. Looking like a cross between Lauren
Graham and Kim Deal, she is very believable as a young woman walking the line
between complete mental breakdown and absolute female empowerment.

I
first locked eyes on Spanish actress Paz Vega in Toronto last month, at the
“international” premiere of The
Other Side of the Bed, a sex romp with about a dozen song-and-dance
numbers. I thought the ridiculously attractive Vega got naked a lot in that film, but it now seems like a drop
in the bucket after seeing Sex & Lucía. The actress,
already a superstar in Spain after playing the equivalent of Rachel on their
equivalent of Friends, does some
singing in Sex, plus, as the title
advertises, there’s plenty of hot monkey love, as well.

            Sex is one of those films that aims to confuse (director Julio Medem’s last film, Lovers of the Arctic Circle, was a
palindrome about characters named Anna and Otto). Just when you think you’ve
got your mind wrapped around its insanely layered story, it drops you down a
rabbit hole of confusion… literally. The film starts with Lucía (Vega)
rushing home from work only to discover her boyfriend Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa)
is dead. She escapes to a remote island to mourn, meeting and moving into a
guesthouse owned by Elena (Najwa Nimri), who we later learn is the mother of a
child fathered by Lorenzo. So far, so good — right?

            While Lucía is on the island, we
see, via flashback, the origins of her relationship with Lorenzo, who was
apparently working on a book. And this is when things really start to get
crazy. It becomes increasingly impossible to separate what’s real from what
Lorenzo is writing, which is remarkably similar to what is happening around
him. Meanwhile, he has a lot of sex with Lucía, who often screams, “I’m
dying!” while she gets her groove on. As if that wasn’t enough to get your
juices flowing, there’s also a thread involving the absurdly buxom (and
potentially fictional) Belén (Elena Anaya), who looks after Elena’s kid.

            Keep it in your pants, gentlemen —
you can see both Vega and Anaya in Pedro Almodóvar’s upcoming Talk To Her.

Anybody
expecting local filmmaker Tim Beideck’s follow-up to the very funny Drivers Wanted to be another Kevin
Smith-inspired laugh riot might be in for a shock. In Gertrude’s Monster,
Beideck blends eclectic elements like horror, religion, mathematics, and
haircutting (okay — maybe they’re all rooted in horror) into a 20-minute tale
about a nine-year-old girl named Gertrude and a bowlegged hunchback with
crossed eyes who talks like a character in a badly-dubbed martial arts flick.
And he isn’t even the monster!

            You can catch Gertrude’s Monster Thursday, October 24, at Johnny’s Smoke-Free
Bar, 1382 Culver Road, at 8 p.m. Admission is $5, and you can buy copies of the
film after the screening. Beideck will use the proceeds in his quest to land a
distribution deal for Drivers Wanted.
For more information, visit his website at www.pillensfarm.com.

For
more of Jon’s unsanitized movie ramblings, visit his site, Planet Sick-Boy (www.sick-boy.com), or listen to him on WBER’s
Friday Morning Show.

This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2002.