I always thought I loved “The Real Thing” because I loved Tom Stoppard’s great romantic comedy as a work of theatre and I do to a degree, but after watching Maggie Gyllenhaal’s atrocious performance Off Broadway last summer, I’ve decided a lot of it had to do with the lead actress the first time I saw it: Jennifer Ehle. Ehle is the daughter of the great actress Rosemary Harris, and Ehle is great in her own rights. In “The Real Thing”, Ehle brought off intelligent sensuality with a devastating forthrightness that made you believe the lengths men might go for her. In “Shades Of Grey”, Ehle plays Anna Steele (Dakota Johnson) mom, a nothing role -though so are are all the others, with a steady smile and a transformative beauty. She doesn’t simply act circles round everyone, she is the only person worth watching.
Speaking of Maggie Gyllenhaal, Maggie played the secretary in “Secretary”, a much more astute movie about sadomasochism, in which through submission, she transform her lover. It was, in its own way, as great as Aretha Franklin singing “Breathlessly and eager, submission isn’t easy for me” and vasty superior to the girls porn “Fifty Shades Of Grey”. In “Grey” s&m fiend, 27 year old billionaire Christian Grey (a dull Jamie Dorman) lures college kid Anna into s&m games while trying to fend off her attempts to fall in love with him.
The problem here isn’t fantasy as much as S&M.The story doesn’t work as s&m because Anna (an out of her depths Dakota) isn’t into s&m, she dislikes it too much to work for the movie to work on the terms it appears to have set for itself. The only way for an s and m fantasy to work is if both the s and m are seriously into it. If acting out Grey’s fantasy’s had revealed something to Dakota something about her own sexuality… well, maybe. And I realize this is only part one but it should stand alone and as a stand alone it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Let me make it simple. Grey, tortured by his crack addicted mom as a child, inverts his pains, he is “50 shades Of Fucked Up” and it is up to Dakota to save him, but if she is not into it, they have no story. And if she isn’t, Christian is an abusive asshole and she is a moron.But it has to be this way because they have to drag the damn story out for years, there must be a reason for Christian to be turned down.
The fantasy in the book seemed to me (without reading it) to be women’s dream of being dominated, a rape fantasy where choice is taken away. But it isn’t. This is Barbara Cartland redux: a rich handsome powerful man brought to his knees by an ordinary girl. The good girl wins the bad boy, indeed it isn’t even a million miles away from Melanie Griffith an Harrison Ford in the much much much better “Working Girl”.
“50 Shades Of Grey” isn’t much but it isn’t terrible. The opulence is opulent, the s&m scenes are sexy enough, neither of the actors are particularly good but they do the job and Jennifer Ehle is worth waiting for. Plus, nobody is taking it particularly seriously as a feminist scribe or a sexual manifesto so why should I? Hey, it’s better than that crap soundtrack (except Bey of course)
Grade: B-