Secretary (DVD)

...(Sex, Lies, and a Videotape). Secretary is based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill called Bad Behaviour. - Set in a town in America, Lee lives a bit of a tortured life. Her mother is overprotective and her father is a hopeless alcoholic. She is witness to her parents constant arguing, and the father beating her mother up. Self harming since the seventh grade Lee finds life very difficult. She is shy, nervous, immature, and has just recovered from ...
...lights, and he changes his secretary regularly. Dimming the lights as he does so. This should be a warning sign to Lee, but she is very grateful to have been offered the job, and she does all she can to please him, and he does expect rather a lot. There is a turning point early on in the film when Mr Gray asks Lee to retrieve some important papers he has thrown away in the trash, knee deep in a rubbish skip, she is quite happy, and does not question ...

Morning_Becomes_Electra 15.02.2008 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

...this is not the first secretary Grey has nurtured this kind of relationship with; and that his behaviour hasn’t always been motivated by love. Lee’s desire, her active pursuit of this treatment, even after Grey has backed off, goes a long way to assuage our fears. As does her development from an awkward child dressed in an ill-fitting blue bridesmaid’s gown or purple hooded poncho into a vision of glamour, poised and polished like a 1940’s starlet. ...
...and throw away the implements she uses to hurt herself, it allows her to be free and become a woman. It is also important to realise that this is only one part of the love that is growing between these two misfits. A man, who is aroused by receiving a dead worm in the mail, is clearly meant for the girl who was aroused by sending him a live one the day before. Interestingly enough the plot follows a fairly typical romantic comedy pattern. I’m not ...

Zoe 15.01.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

As a story Secretary is extraordinary in the most basic sense of the word. It pushes suburban life into gentle extremes, whilst maintaining a light heart, and is at its core a love story and a simple tale about accepting who you are. Lee Holloway- MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL E. Edward Grey- JAMES SPADER Peter- JEREMY DAVIES Joan Holloway- LESLEY ANN WARREN Burt Holloway- STEPHEN MCHATTIE Screenplay by ERIN CRESSIDA WILSON based on a short story by MARY ...
...them, such as spanking his secretary when she makes a few typos... What follows is an exciting and frightening journey through the psyche as Lee and Grey find their way through the minefields of sex, love and relationships a little differently than most. Given the way this film is advertised and summarised, it's easy to write it off as some sort of S&M porn comedy. What it turns out to be is a sensitively directed, beautifully acted and skilfully ...

ruth_cole 13.06.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

...confidence enough, to become a secretary to a very peculiar lawyer, E Edward Grey. Things there are fine to begin with, although you must take into account that "fine" is just relative, and not at all normal. She battles with water fountains, a one-man legal show that has the most unusual seating arrangements for reception, and which relies on a single old manual typewriter. And, of course, with Edward. Throughout the next one hour fifty we see ...
...giving up the self-harming. Secretary is one of those category-defining films that American independent cinema can sometimes manage to provide us. It is a love story, it is a satire about romances at work, and about work in general, but it is also a story of a young woman's maturation into empowerment. As Lee gets involved in this relationship, we see hers and Peter burgeon yet stall, and we see Lee blossom. Yet the character of Lee left a bit ...

theediscerning 19.08.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

...and I must admit that Secretary is one of those. Directed by Steven Shainberg and based on the short story Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill, my first reaction when I watched this film originally (I was still in my "I love James Spader" phase) was that it was just another strange kinky drama that James Spader seemed to specialise in at one time. And I had always viewed Maggie Gyllenhaal as an actress who played characters who were slightly odd. And ...
...wrong. In fact on the first watch I must admit I was quite disappointed by the film. It wasn't sexy, there wasn't enough naked James Spader and it wasn't even funny and for an erotic black comedy I would have expected it to be. But then last night I watched it again and have to say that having seen all the "erotic" bits once and discarded them as not worth watching again I actually started to see this film for what it really is - an unusual but touching ...

Suzela 10.02.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

The Secretary - A unique and adventurous film, designed to give the viewer a romance from a different angle. Of course, S/M is certainly an important factor in this film, but it isn't what the film is all about. To say it was a film about S/M would be missing the point entirely. It is a beautiful love story, of being different, being accepted and acceptance of oneself. Of two people finding their way together in a world where it is so easy to lose ...
...Lee Holloway, played by the fabulous Maggie Gyllenhaal, has lost her way. Life hasn’t been easy for her due to family circumstances, and she has headed down the wrong paths. Lee isn’t a bad person by any means, she is just a person with many issues, who has not yet discovered who she really is. Cutting and burning herself is just her way of releasing all the pent up pain inside. It is the only way she knows, and even after rejoining her family following ...

samileo 06.10.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

...the mind of the naughty secretary as his hand swooshes down on her red roar bottom. In fact she is soon willing to do pretty much anything for her boss, something that her real boyfriend (Jeremy Davis) could never grasps when she introduces it into their stale love life. Alas Lee begins to fall for her naughty lawyer who shows quite the opposite of affection for her in return. Can their mutual love of S&M eventually bring them together to a match ...
...emotional hurled back into the nut house……. # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # The Director # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # I suppose director’ Steven Sheinberg’ is telling a story of two misfits coming to terms with their dark sexuality and finding it is possible to make up the rules as they go along. We are not all normal and turned on in different ways, things we are told to be embarrassed about by our denominated religions ...

talktothehand 01.03.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

...un-original embrace. The secretary shows a more 'normal' image of love, though not so normal that we could be watching any old couple down the pub on a Friday night. Lee Holloway played by Maggie Gyllenhaal has just been released from an institution. We find that she is a self-harmer who cuts her self to find relief from the pain inside. With a violent alcoholic dad, and few real friends getting back to a normal life is difficult for Lee. She sees ...
...secretary. The lawyer in question; E. Edward Grey (James Spader). Gives her a speedy and slightly bizarre interview and she gets the job. Grey asks lee to complete an array of crappy tasks (such as rooting through a bin) and seems to take pleasure in her submissive nature and the control he has. Their relationship develops and he helps her to deal with her pain in other ways than self-harm. They develop a dominant /submissive relationship which ...

kirstyxxx69 17.02.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

...Maggie Gylenhaal plays a masochistic secretary (Lee) to James Spader,(Mr Gray) a dom with a heart. They play out their fantasies while running a law firm. Throughout the film you see Lee grow from a disfunctional girl to a sexual controlled woman. Every scene is electric, whether it be funny, dramatic, endearing or downright sexy. Maggie Gylenhaal plays the role perfectly, awkward yet beautiful, and James Spader is powerful yet vunerable. This is ...
...flopped at cinemas but became a cult classic to masses. There is a fabulous soundtrack, with tracks from Lizzie West (check out her Chariot's Rise) and Leonard Cohen's I'm your man. The DVD has loads of great extras, interviews with James Spader, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Steven Shainberg (Director), a dierctor and write commentary, behind the scenes documentary and the usual bios and trailers. The film itself has won many awards including: Best ...

mistresslenore 24.10.2005 (09.01.2006) · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

Well, I must confess this movie ended up being a bit disappointing. The synopsis talked about a love grown among two people very different from the regular expectations. That's true, no doubt. But the idea could have been better explored, I think. The main character, a girl that after spending some time in a mental institution becomes an unexpected secretary, was born in a dysfunctional family, with a alcoholic father and a mother striving to work ...
...cured from her obsession of physically hurting herself (cutting the skin most of the times…), she learns to type and surprisingly joins an one lawyer only, company. This lawyer soon realizes her weakness and starts behaving in a weird way, giving her physical (erotically) punishments. And she likes it, against all odds. The relation is built from this strange complicity, and they rapidly enter in a Sadomasochism practice, that reinforce their bonds ...

R_A_C 21.11.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

...She applies for a Secretary job at Lawyer E. Edward Grey's office. Mr Grey himself is a strange man and as Lee does her best to meet his demands, his requests get stranger and stranger. Mr Grey discovers Lee's self harming he tries to help her, in a rather unorthodox way. Soon Lee begins to rely on the controlling behaviour of her boss and is unable to cope when this stops. She becomes determined to keep this relationship going after finding that ...
...like? - This film is seriously weird. There is almost no story to speak of and for most of the film its only Gyllenhaal and Spader who are both play extremely odd characters. Despite this I couldn't switch this film off, and when I made the suggestion of not watching the rest to my friend who was cynical about the film in the first place, he also did not want to stop. It's a very strange film but I think the actors all do their best to keep it going, ...

fionad86 16.10.2008 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)

Despite the seeming extremity of the main character, the audience is compelled to identify with her. This is due in part to the great lengths she goes to to get what she wants; Lee Holloway is submissive without being passive. The encounters between her and Mr Grey are portrayed as a brilliantly intense connection of two otherwise lonely individuals. Although this film isn’t for everybody, it should stir the imaginations of anyone who has worked ...

immaterialgirl 22.07.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Secretary (DVD)