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2/5
“Is there anything wrong with a bit of fun, effervescent trash?” I asked myself before walking into Fifty Shades of Grey. Not in the least, at least not to as hopeless a sap as myself. When it comes to populist romantic fiction, I find myself the lone champion of what is frankly an unjustly maligned genre (at the risk of relinquishing my credibility as a cineast, I even find a great deal to enjoy in the Twilight films, a franchise that makes no apologies for its pulpy intentions). In me, you could not have found a viewer more prepared to embrace material of this ripeness. The movie itself, I’m sad to say, is a failure not because of its steamy origins but because of its inability to follow through with its own convictions. It is all tease, no pay off, featuring one of the most maliciously anticlimactic endings I have ever seen. Perhaps this was done in the name of good taste, but isn’t that missing the point?
Anastasia Steele, an English Literature major, is as token a character as any in a story like this. She’s soft-spoken, awkward, insecure, and foaming with a biblical innocence that screams in every twitch of her body language to be bent over a table and… well, you can fill in the blanks. The fact that she quickly transcends her tropes and blossoms into a genuinely likable human being is a testament to Dakota Johnson’s dimension as an actress. She knows precisely what kind of film she’s in, and yet she seems just as committed to this performance as any. When Ana’s roommate Eloise comes down with a grisly flu, she sends Ana in her place to interview one of the world’s premiere billionaires, Christian Grey. I struggled to see how that decision made any sense, but it’s a narrative conceit, and I knew better than to question it. The moment Ana stumbles (quite literally) into Christian’s office, she is spellbound. He is charismatic, measured, and intimidating, everything that Ana isn’t. She manages to ask four interview questions before Christian turns the tables and begins to interview her. She claims there’s not much to her (“I mean, look at me.”), but he’s walked the streets long enough to know better.
Just days after, he begins planting seeds of interest throughout Ana’s life, sending her expensive gifts, appearing at her place of work simply to mine tension, and being generally enigmatic in the manner requisite for the story. This “will they won’t they” courtship will strike some as irritating, but oddly enough, I found myself relishing every moment of it, even if we know it all turns out. Eventually, Christian admits to Ana that there are things about him nobody else knows, not even his family. He has certain desires that he describes as “singular”. We know exactly what he means, and to some extant, so does Ana. They fly together in Grey’s luxurious private helicopter to his estate in Seattle where he finally unveils what he’s been keeping from Ana for so long: his “Playroom”, an enormous walk-in closet with every inch covered in whips, chains, restraints, and all manner of adult intimacy aids. Ana is floored, and more than a bit overwhelmed. Christian reveals that he’s a dominant, somebody who takes pleasure in sexually controlling his partners. He invites Ana to be his submissive, an arrangement that would require her to sign a contract, live with him in Seattle (though crucially in separate bedrooms — he “doesn’t sleep with people”), and to obey his every command as agreed upon in the contract. Ana is frightened. She is also intrigued, so much so that she takes Christian’s offer of sexual submission into careful consideration.
If it seems as if I’m taking quite awhile to get into the thick of it (so to speak), that’s because the film does too, and this is ultimately it’s greatest strength and the beginning of it’s downfall. It fleshes out its central relationship only to subvert it with a narrative that has no interest in its complexities. The first sexually explicit scene between Ana and Christian feels remarkably intimate, organic even, and it feels like the beginning of a genuine portrait of a young woman’s sexual awakening. It is after this coital catharsis that the movie plateaus and begins its descent into nearly unbearable operatic tedium. Where the film should have escalated and provided more insight into the psychology of these characters and their fascinating dynamic, it ends where it should have begun, settling for thinly-written melodrama with all the narrative propulsion of a dead fish. Past a certain point, the film abandons all sense of arc and cohesion, leaving the viewer lost in a swill of quasi-Harlequin constituents. When the movie abruptly cuts to black, the entire cinema joined in a collective moment of outrage. I sat slack-jawed, thinking, “That’s it? How? Why? Where are we?”
Of the sex itself, there is plenty on display, and yet it all seems so weightless and oddly sterile. There is much talk of Christian’s past and why he needs to hurt people for pleasure, but rarely does it ever ring true, especially not during his scenes to demonstrate such. There is one scene in particular during which Anastasia begs Christian to use her body to convey the deeply rooted pain he fails to express in words. Director Sam Taylor-Wood and DP Seamus McGarvey mount the act with empathy, but not with maturity, with taste, but not with intelligence. Perhaps that’s more a failing of E. L. James’s source, a book I have admittedly never read, but if the material was lacking in insight to begin with, then why adapt it with such a high mind? Why such restraint in the making a film about sexual freedom? If you’re going to inject class into what is essentially pulp, then why not couple it with the substance such a polished vision calls for?
There has been much discussion of the sexual politics of the film, and I will leave those discussions to people far more versed in the nuances of that subject than I am. If I condemn Fifty Shades of Grey, I condemn it as a half-baked film. It begins well and quickly becomes too boring to be worthy of the moral questions provoked by its source. As I watched the story unravel minute by minute, I couldn’t help but imagine what this movie would have been like directed by great Canadian auteur David Cronenberg. A ridiculous notion to some, certainly, but take a moment to consider. It would have been half the length and twice as interesting, both dramatically and intellectually, and the piece as a whole would have been poignant and adventurous in ways this adaption never so much as touches. There was potential here both for sweeping romance and for transgressive exploration of the human animal, and it ultimately fails to commit to either. The result is a cinematic nonentity, one made all the more painful by a first act that provided glimpses of so much more.
Spencer Moleda is a freelance writer, script supervisor, and motion picture researcher residing in Los Angeles, California. His experience ranges from reviewing movies to providing creative guidance to fledgling film projects. You can reach him at: www.spencermoleda.com
Spencer Moleda is a freelance writer, script supervisor, and motion picture researcher residing in Los Angeles, California. His experience ranges from reviewing movies to providing creative guidance to fledgling film projects. You can reach him at: [email protected]