“Eat me. Drink me.”
The H-Bomb: Filling in for her sick, journalism student roommate, English lit. major Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) arrives at a sleek office building to interview young, uber-wealthy business tycoon, Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). Since Anastasia has absolutely no journalistic training or experience, the interview is exceptionally clunky and awkward (for the record, this would NOT happen in real life. A sick journalist would NEVER pass their assignment on to someone with no training or experience who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing, but I digress).
Even though this interview is going horribly, Anastasia and Christian are taken with each other. He’s cool, sophisticated, mysterious, with a hunky, Edward Cullen quality to him. She’s young, virginal, naive, and, of course, hot. They gaze into each other’s eyes, and there is instant chemistry (or so the filmmakers would have us believe). He turns up at the hardware store where she works to purchase duct tape and rope (we the audience knowingly chuckle at the intended use of those items), and the next thing Anastasia knows, he’s taking her up in his own private helicopter, to his Seattle apartment.
Christian is a strange, distant, standoffish sort. Anastasia is nonetheless drawn to him, as he is to her. She thinks this is the beginning of a beautiful romance. Then Christian does something peculiar… he has papers drawn up, and requests that Anastasia sign a contract, as well as a non-disclosure agreement. Anastasia is fairly inexperienced when it comes to relationships, but she knows that this is not what any rationally minded person would consider normal.
As she’s about to find out, Christian doesn’t do normal. He doesn’t do normal and he doesn’t do relationships. He doesn’t do romance. He doesn’t make love. He fucks. Hard. He is fifty shades of fucked up.
There was a point, as I was sitting in the largely female preview audience for this lurid, two-hour long perfume commercial, where I realized that I was watching an R-rated Twilight film with a BDSM twist. Much to my non-surprise, while reading up on Fifty Shades of Grey, adapted from the first in a trilogy of novels by E.L. James, I discovered that it had in fact started life as a Twilight fan fiction. Makes perfect sense. Two attractive, yet thoroughly vapid, shallow characters meet, and a romance based mainly on lingering stares and moody cinematography ensues.
Well, there is a difference. Where Twilight would have us believe that its central relationship is based on some deep emotional connection, Fifty Shades of Grey makes it clear that its two protagonists pretty much just want to fuck. Actually, Christian does want something more, he wants to control Anastasia. He wants her to be the submissive to his dominant. To do whatever he says, whenever he says it. To give in to his every demand, and fulfill his every desire whenever they’re inside his special red room. And anytime she is bad, he will punish her.
I can see why this is going over so well with various feminist organizations. However, I would point out to them that both the novel and the screenplay are written by women, the film is directed by a woman, Sam Taylor-Johnson (aka Mrs. Kick-Ass), and that the aforementioned mostly female audience I saw this with ate it right up. Why? Because it’s fantasy, a rather ludicrous one that’s really not worth getting riled up into a foaming frenzy over.
Yes, the woman is objectified (so is the guy, for that matter). Yes, she’s subjected to all sorts of bizarre S&M violence (though no anal fisting, she drew the line there). And yes, in a real world setting, this “relationship” would be totally sick and diseased. But this isn’t a real world setting, and getting upset over this is kind of like getting upset over Showgirls… it’s so goddamn ridiculous that getting angry with it is just a waste of emotion.
That’s another thing that separates Fifty Shades of Grey from Twilight, it knows how bloody stupid it is, and it plays off that… at least, I think it does. The dialogue between Christian and Anastasia is so howlingly cheesy and downright dumb that I suspect it’s intentionally being played for laughs. I could be wrong, and I’m sure the novels are totally earnest. However, I sensed a self-awareness to the film, that it knows it’s a trashy, idiotic romance novel, and it plays it to the hilt. Johnson and Dornan often look as though they’re about to burst into laughter at any moment, and the fact that they were able to keep their faces straight in spite of the astonishingly awful dialogue spewing from their mouths, makes their performances award worthy.
That this thing is, again, lit and photographed like an Estee Lauder ad, with shot compositions that are as neat, and tidy, and orderly as Mr. Grey’s numerous perfectly pressed suits, merely adds to the strange camp value. For the first hour or so, I was genuinely enjoying it, despite all the kinky stupidness. Then, in the second half, it turned into a meandering slog, with our lead couple visiting each other’s parents (his adopted mother is played by Marcia Gay Harden, in case you care), glider flights, redundant arguments over signing “the contract,” and the occasional trip to the Red Room for more fetishistic freakiness. In other words, a whole lot of nothing happened. Very much like the first Twilight, this film ultimately has no real story and went nowhere fast.
When I realized this, I stopped laughing, and became profoundly bored. Unlike such so-bad-they’re-brilliant classics as Plan 9 and The Room, this one runs out of steam about midway through, and turns into an epic ordeal to sit through. It’s a shame, because I was going to recommend it to those who love to laugh at bad movies. Sadly, the joke wears off, and we’re left with a middle-aged woman’s deviant sex fantasy. Two dull, lifeless “lovers” and their equally dull-yet-creepy relationship. Even the fetching Ms. Johnson bearing it all for the camera couldn’t keep me interested (I also have a hard time believing that she never had a boyfriend and made it through college a virgin).
The most depressing aspect of Fifty Shades of Grey is that, if the books’ vast following is any indication, it will be a hit, and at least two more movies are sure to follow. All I can do to stop that, is to tell you not to see it. Not for the reasons the feminists scream. Not because it’s misogynistic, degrading, and offensive (which again, in a real world setting, it would be). But because it is boring, plotless, and pointless.
