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SECRETARY (Green, take a letter)
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We two form a multitude, wrote Ovid on the subject of love, but he could also have said, We two form a closed system, and where we find our dual happiness is our own mystery, our own secret. Indeed, part of love is its secrecy, what we two know that no one else knows. And who better to keep these confidences that a secretary, by definition a 'person entrusted with secrets'; indeed, a secretaire is a private desk, locked and keyed.
Sweet-faced timid Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal, in a mesmerizing debut performance) is just freed from six months in a mental institution after a botched suicide that causes her mother (bleached blousy Lesley Ann Warren, born of CINDERELLA by way of CHOOSE ME) to padlock the knives in the under-sink kitchen cabinet, "just to be safe, honey." Lee has no skills but she wants desperately to serve, so she takes – and, to her surprise, aces – a typing course and, sodden certificate in hand, totters toward a job interview, Little Red Riding Hood in a lavender plastic poncho.
Inside the non-descript brick house-turned-office she finds a magnificent samurai harem – dark wood, perpendicular lines, Asian accessories, hushed yellow cone lighting, Hugh Hefner meets Yukio Mishima – through which flees a weeping pudgy woman clutching a Recordkeeper box of belongings, her baleful passing glance saying without words, You're next.
In every male actor's career, there is a moment when his aging face forces him out of winsome lad into either morose father or latent villain. If the actor is shrewd, he chooses well the role with which to surprise us – think Gene Hackman in UNFORGIVEN, or Charles Dance in WHITE MISCHIEF; Johnny Depp will soon confront this choice. James Spader has always played cool, clever, quiet, slightly rotten (for instance, his junior securities lawyer in WALL STREET), but he has ranged from studious (STARGATE, an underrated movie) to deeply troubled (his breakout role in SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE) to clinically homicidal (2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY). Here, from the first staring murmurs he delivers to Lee as overwound-watchspring attorney E. Edward Grey, Spader harnesses his simmering outré sexuality, laying down his rules: no questions, no backtalk, no familiarity, no types, no computers – just pure, perfect, flawless typing.
The movie's retro-Luddite choice of Selectric typewriters is brilliant, for they were the apotheosis of typing as eros: black sculpted keys, a sexy machine-gun clatter, carbon-ink imprinted into heavy rag paper. The physicality of Lee's typing is made further tactile by Grey's corrections – he circles every error in blood-red felt tip and frames each failure, lining the impossibly long hallway between her desk and his cushiony office with a gallery of shame. In turn, she brings him each piece like a fragile gift and lays it gently, tremulously, before him, craving the approval of a black-ink flourishing signature.
Though full of witticisms, this movie is in no sense a comedy; we are captivated – alternately fascinated and repelled – as Grey insidiously raises the humiliation stakes. If ever you have wondered how two people start an S&M relationship, how assumes dominance, another submission, and what emotional bargains and rules of engagement underlie their bargain, wonder no more. You will see it onscreen.
To say more would be to spoil the serpentine twists the story takes, twists that hold us captive. Maggie Gyllenhaal (daughter of director Stephen, sister of actor Jake OCTOBER SKY) is a revelation, her performance brave, disturbing, vulnerable, and credible. Newcomer director Steven Shainberg's cinematography and wonderfully subtle music seduce us into an Arabian-nights world inside a plain brick house. The details are exquisite – keep alert for Spader's telephone call with a client, the kind of half-conversation that would have you reaching for the rewind button just to hear it perfectly.
Love is a credulous thing, wrote Ovid in Metamorphoses, and is not the element of trust a key to genuine love? SECRETARY asks this question in a way you have not seen before. You should see it.
As we say in the real estate business, trust me just this once.