[Lee refuses to remove her hands from the desk]

Peter: Are you doing something sexual?

Lee: Does this look sexual to you?

 

It’s been over a decade since I first saw Secretary but I still vividly remember watching the trailer for the first time; I took one look and practically sprinted down to the local cinema. The sight of Maggie Gyllenhaal crawling down that corridor with the envelope in her mouth?

Oh, my.

I don’t often revisit films once I’ve seen them – not even those I really love – but the re-watching of Secretary has been on my ‘to do’ list for some time. Why? Well, sexually speaking, I’m in a very different place from when I first viewed it and I was extremely curious to see whether I had the same visceral reaction to it with more time and experience on my side. But, of course, I got busy with other things (as you do) and kept forgetting.

Then, last week, I read the article Sex, cinema and secrets: early exposure at the arthouse in The Guardian. Written by Erin Cressida Wilson, who penned Secretary’s screenplay, it was an incredibly fascinating piece, exploring, as the title suggests, her early exposure to depictions of sexuality in fringe film. It gave me the proverbial nudge I needed and, Saturday night, her words fresh in my mind, I made myself comfortable in front of the T.V.

I’ll admit, I was both curious and nervous.

In my early twenties, I found Secretary both arousing and unsettling – the former because the sexuality depicted was of a sort I identified very strongly with, the latter because I was more than a little troubled that Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character, Lee, created a somewhat hazy line between two things that I believe are very, very separate – self-harming and masochism. Would the pull of the former still be there, or were my perceptions filtered through a rose-tinted prism of naivety? Would the latter prove to be an even greater stumbling block than it was initially?

Surprisingly, watching the film again, I think the line between Lee’s self-harming and her masochistic leanings is perhaps clearer than I initially perceived it to be. Her strength, which builds and builds to something quite magnificent as she finds happiness in her need to submit, really does come across  and I love that it is her absolute acceptance of her sexual needs that ultimately pull Mr Grey (James Spader’s character) into a relationship with her. That she embraces her submission to him and, in doing, so enables him to accept his dominance over her. But the underlying suggestion of one replacing the other? Ten years on? I still feel that. And a nagging part of me can’t help but wonder: how many people watch Secretary and see self-harming and masochism as being inextricably linked or one and the same thing?

Contextual issues aside? I was really pleased to discover that my love for Secretary’s BDSM elements has definitely survived the passage of time, although there are some that resonate more strongly now than they did upon my initial watching of it. The scene that I mentioned at the very beginning of this post, the one in which Maggie crawls with the letter in her mouth, was one of my favourites (and it still gives me the tingles, without question) but I found it was the subtler, more emotional, details surrounding Lee’s submission that drew me in second time around.

The tone of Mr Grey’s voice when he’s disciplining her, his quietness as he tells her to bend over his desk.

Her absolute confidence in her actions as her shocked family watch her count out her four peas and carefully place just the right amount of mashed potato on her plate.

The wonderful mix of acceptance and uncertainty and vulnerability on her face as Mr Grey masturbates over her.

The frustration and flatness and disappointment conveyed in her expression following ‘vanilla’ sex with her boyfriend Peter.

Her strength and confidence in her submission, the rightness of it, as she sits, determinedly, with her hands upon Mr Grey’s desk.

My Secretary revisit also gave rise to one entirely new observation, one pertinent to a certain book, soon to be released as a film. M was working away on the computer at the dining table as I watched it and, inevitably, wandered over every now and then to take in snippets that interested him. As he stood observing Lee refine her ‘answering the phone’ voice, he made a connection I had fleetingly wondered about some time back.

“Er, did she just say ‘Mr Grey’?”

A quick Google search revealed that we are not the only ones to have joined these dots. And there were many commenters on Erin Wilson’s article who were keen to compare Secretary to the forthcoming Fifty movie. For me, however, that surname is about the only thing that links these two pieces of cinema.

Attractive, wealthy man with a few kinky props versus a one who circles typing errors on a page in red pen and comes all over his secretary’s blouse? Only one of those men looks sexual to me. And it’s not the one in the expensive suit.

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