The Automatik

My rule of thumb is this: if I’m still thinking about a movie the day after I’ve seen it, then it was worth seeing, and often will go into my “favorite movies” list. Not only have I not stopped thinking about Secretary, I haven’t even been able to make sense of what I think about it. Not since Fight Club has a movie so unsettled me. I’m even more hesitant than normal to give away plot details, but if some creep into this review, please forgive me.

Secretary, as you may already know, is about sadomasochistic behavior. But it’s not violent and it’s not silly. It actually manages to give dignity to both fetishes and masturbation, the latter of which usually only appears in porn and movies about teens and baked goods. It also gives James Spader (as E. Edward Grey) the role of his career. His repression is palpable: his quivering chin and desperate bouts of sit-ups and chin-ups say more than any dialogue ever could.

The thrust of the whole movie is symbolized by the elaborate orchid display in Grey’s office and his frequent use of red Sharpie pens. And if you see female genitalia when you look at a Georgia O’Keeffe painting, then you’ll get the idea. The water that mists over the thirsty flowers is remote-controlled by him; he caresses their petals and injects them with a syringe. As his flowers bloom, so does his mousy secretary with poor posture. Lee Holloway (Maggie Glyllenhall) shows a transformation not unlike Madame de Torvel in Dangerous Liaisons. It doesn’t take much imagination to see Grey’s red-tipped pens as the representation of another sexual organ (the scene where he gazes at the pen on the passenger seat of his car recalls the hilarious airplane dream sequence in Lair of the White Worm when Hugh Grant’s pen slowly rises to an erect postion).

At first Grey’s obsessive annoyance with Lee’s typos, hair-pulling, and foot-tapping could seem like the tantrums of any anal-retentive, pain-in-the-ass boss, particularly those that also happen to be lawyers (and believe me, I’ve had them). But soon you realize that his irritation masks a need to control something more than what’s in his legal briefs. He wants to dictate what happens because he’s afraid of lust, he’s afraid of feelings. His treatment of Lee might seem cruel because she’s a recovering self-mutilator. But his interest in her is beyond physical; the scene in which he confronts her about her cutting shows that he’s got a tender side.

If ever two dysfunctional people belonged together, it was Grey and Lee. Somehow their need to control and be controlled seem to work together and there’s even a happy ending (and a rather sensuous one at that). Secretary is the most profound, mature film about sex and love that I’ve seen in a long time. It takes its subject matter seriously, rather than glossing it over with flash edits, slow motion, and excessive female nudity. Besides, any film that uses “Music To Watch Girls By” in the diegetic soundtrack is worth seeing.