(USA, 125 min.)
Dir. Sam Taylor-Johnson, Writ. Kelly Marcel
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan,
Jennifer Ehle, Eloise Mumford, Marcia Gay Harden
The following conversation took place during my bookselling days:
Thirty-ish female customer:Do you have that trashy book everyone’s reading?Me:Fifty Shades of Grey? Oh, yeah. It’s right over here.[Leads customer to the offending book and hands it to her.]Here you go…[Pauses awkwardly thanks to the “personal storytelling” angle of the store.]We actually have a Buy 2 Get 1 Free deal going on this week, too, if you’re interested in reading the whole trilogy.Customer:Oh, there’s three of them? [Flips the cover.] Hunh. Have you read it?Me:[blushes] No, no. Not yet… But my mom has and she said it was fun. It’s really popular. I think it’s everyone’s mom’s favourite book right now.Customer:[LOLs] That’s why I checked the “Romance” section first. [Peeks inside.][Beat. Weird eyebrow-raise look. Glances at the cover again.]Can I get this on my Kobo?
This film by Sam Taylor-Johnson (Nowhere Boy) is actually pretty tame for
a film with source material of such notoriety. Only a year after Nymphomaniac, two years after Blue is the Warmest Color, and over
twenty years after Basic Instinct, Fifty Shades of Grey seems rather flaccid.
It’s only skin deep, and the skin on display doesn’t cover any new ground.
It is, in all fairness, pretty hot for a
sexy movie penned by the screenwriter of Saving Mr. Banks, but there’s really no reason for this film to exist. Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t make any
headway for representations of female sexuality, which is notably disappointing
for such a major studio production that boasts women in the director and writer
credits, although they can hardly be blamed for the misfire of Fifty Shades of Grey if the rumours
surrounding the production and James’ control are true. Fifty Shades of Grey is just as disappointing if one approaches it
as a guilty pleasure since it’s neither ridiculous nor naughty. It’s anything
but the hot mess one hopes it would be.
It’s really too bad that Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t go full
porno since an edgier, hotter, rougher dramatization might have at least
brought a Showgirls-level novelty to
a misfire. A few snickers abound as Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) trades
cheesy dialogue with Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) when she fills in for her roommate
on an interview and it seems, for a while at least, that Fifty Shades of Grey is in on the joke of its own ridiculousness.
Lame loaded dialogue and double entendres tease the audience for what’s about
to come for the virginal Ana and her brooding billionaire with a secret passion
for kinky sex, but viewers anticipating an orgy of camp will be quickly disheartened.
The bad writing of Fifty Shades of Grey isn’t
funny because it wants to be funny: it’s funny only because we want it to be
funny. The novelty quickly loses steam.
“I exercise control in all things, Miss
Steele,” says Mr. Grey with penetrating sex-ray vision.
“Must be really boring,” Miss Steele
replies as the high schooly flirtation foreshadows the game ahead.
Mr. Grey insists that his singular and restrained
tastes are anything but dull, yet Miss Steele is correct.
“Eat,” he insists.
She asks why, but then eats. Ana also
kneels, fetches, and bends over for Mr. Grey at his insistence.
Fifty
Shades wastes no time in introducing the notion
that Grey’s psycho-sexual control over Ana is unhealthy, but it wastes the opportunity
to do anything substantial with the warped gender politics of his pleasure in
playing the dominant to Ana’s submissive. Fifty
Shades of Grey, in a post-Jian Ghomeshi culture both sensitive and attune
to consent, force, and violence in the bedroom, unfortunately uses bondage and sexual dominance only as a cheap thrill. It treats the subject too
mildly and too timidly to make an effective statement either for female empowerment
or against the sadomasochistic subjugation of women. Dornan’s performance is all
surface, and the tacked-on mentions of a crack-addict birth mother and a Mrs.
Robinson figure are half-assed attempts to explore the drives behind Grey’s
sexual thrills.
The film’s shyness also treats Ana’s growing
sexuality rather lamely. Johnson has lots of spunk playing up the naughty
librarian side of Anastasia Steele, but Fifty
Shades rarely feels like a story of sexual awakening seen through Ana’s
eyes. Husbands and boyfriends dragged along to see the film might actually
enjoy it more (or they’ll at least get
more out of the sex scenes, anyways), and Fifty
Shades disappoints by perpetuating the age-old male gaze in such a major
project for female filmmakers and viewers alike. Taylor-Johnson presents the
sexual escapades between Ana and Christine more as soft core lovemaking with
some Beyoncé on in the background—there’s hotter stuff on soap operas—and it’s far
too stylish and graceful to feel like anything beyond a glorified adaptation of
a book one buys at the drug store.
Taylor-Johnson, DP Seamus McGarvey (Anna Karenina), and a trio of editors
light, block and cut everything so elegantly and tastefully that nothing too
indecent creeps into the frame. There are flashes of pubic hair and a millisecond
tease at Dornan’s nether regions that makes Ben Affleck’s money shot in Gone Girl look like a long take. Fifty Shades of Grey carries an
unmistakable whiff of studio modesty. Fifty
Shades holds back and opts for an R-rating (so that parents can take their
kids) when it really needs to approach NC-17 territory to be hot and wild enough to work as
either art or novelty, and the restraint inadvertently passes judgement on Grey
and Ana’s sexual preferences. (The reserve looks really bad on Universal’s
part, since the film comes shortly after the release of Unbroken, which itself struggles to shake the effects of studio
sanitization to achieve its full force.)
Since Fifty
Shades is too shy when it comes to sex, it never holds any authority over
its subject. It knows that bondage involves safe words, sure, but even an
outsider knows that there’s a lot more to this sexual dynamic than handcuffs
and whips, so Fifty Shades never gets
inside either Ana or Christian’s heads by fully conveying the humiliation and
high they respectively receive from their relationship. A few spanks, a few
strokes with some peacock features, and a veto on the anal fisting clause in
Christian’s S&M contact are all that the film musters. Fifty Shades of Grey is like a nice, tastefully-made dirty movie by Ron
Howard, but boring.
Rating: ★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Fifty Shades of Grey is
now playing in wide release.
