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Synopsis: Lee Holloway has just been released from a mental institutions into the custody of her dysfunctional family. She's released on the day of her sister's wedding, which affords her father an opportunity to fall off the wagon and her high school sweetheart a chance to cozy back up to her. All of which is overwhelming to her, so she retreats back to her room, where she has a sewing kit filled with sharp objects with which she likes to cut herself. There has to be something better for her, she surmises, so she learns to type at the local community college and begins scanning the help-wanted ads in the newspaper. Her first interview is with lawyer E. Edward Grey, who she finds extremely intimidating and attractive at the same time. Grey, it seems, has his own demons to contend against. He has a drawer full of red pens with which he terrorizes secretaries. His anal retentiveness verges on obsessional behavior. Soon, he begins to correct virtually all aspects of Lee's professional presentation. Rather than get annoyed by this, Lee thinks it's a turn-on. Meanwhile, Grey isn't quite sure of how he feels about Lee. He is jealous of her boyfriend, and manifests this jealousy with even more strict demands in the office. Eventually, he has Lee over his desk administering a spanking to her. This sends her over the edge, and their relationship deepens into a kinkier sort of eroticism. Unfortunately for Lee's high school sweetheart, he just can't provide her with what she needs. Grey, on the other hand, isn't sure he SHOULD provide her with what she needs. It consumes him with guilt, and he calls it quits with her. But it's all too late, really, because Lee knows now what SHE wants, and sets out to get it...

Better Living through Power Exchange: This S&M romantic comedy, starts out like it wants to be a lighter version of David Cronenberg’s Crash. The first part of the film has a coldness to it reminiscent of Cronenberg, and the film features both James Spader and an underscore by Angelo Badalamenti that is so close to Howard Shore’s atonal score for Crash that it verges on outright plagiarism. Somewhere along the way, though, the film develops a surprising sweetness to its rough-sex eroticism, and in the end, love conquers all. This is an inversion of Crash, in which its characters--a broad gallery of sexual freaks--are so trapped by their fetishes that they cannot connect with anyone. Secretary takes two fundamentally damaged people and allows them to connect through shared transgression. The relationship between Maggie Gyllenhaal’s self-mutilating waif and Spader’s obsessive alpha reminds me a great deal of the relationship of Bob Flanagan and his dominatrix girlfriend in Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, which postulates that sadomasochism is a means of managing issues of control and pain in a painful, out of control life. Both films are fundamentally optimistic and humane in the end.

Performances: The film wouldn’t work at all if it approached things from the point of view of Spader’s character--it would be a straight male power fantasy in that case--but it works marvellously from Gyllenhaal’s. She is spot on the money with her performance. Spader is good, too, in one of his best roles in years. He comes across as a man completely insecure with his baser urges, a man terrified of Gyllenhaal, who seems to be his ideal mate, but concerned for her, too. The scene where he commands that she never cut herself again is a marvel of alpha male bravado and genuine caring. The film really hinges on his performance, too, since the audience has to believe that a relationship with him is good for Gyllenhaal's character. Otherwise, it would be another case where a woman attaches herself to an asshole to the mystification of everyone, audience included. Fortunately, Spader is very, very good. While the film really hinges on Spader, the film belongs to Gyllenhaal. She is able to transform her essential masochism from a dangerous compulsion into a legitimate human desire. There is never any sense that she isn't the one in control of her relationship with Spader or that he is taking advantage of her, mainly because she is the instigator in most of their activities. And one of the final scenes in the movie in which, totally nude, she shows Spader all the scars she has inflicted on her self is one of the loveliest celebrations of the human body I can remember seeing in a movie.

As a final note, Jeremy Davies looks so much like Corey Feldman in this movie that it starts to get creepy whenever he’s on camera.