Above: Dakota Johnson plays Ana Steele in "Fifty Shades of Grey." Photo ©Universal Pictures and Focus Features
A nighttime ride in
helicopter. A morning soirée in a
glider. Blissfully sleepless nights. All these things billionaire Christian Grey
(Jamie Dornan) gives Ana Steele (Dakota Johnson) in “Fifty Shades of
Grey.” And yet, the most tender and
poignant thing she tells him is this: “I
want more.” She wants his love.
Scoff, if you will.
But “Fifty Shades of Grey” (an adaptation of E L James’ blockbuster
erotic novel) is both a hypnotic sexual fantasy and an earnest portrait of a
young woman discovering her own desires not only as a lover, but as a person. The not-so-good Mr. Grey may have smoothly
slipped his name into the title, but this movie, above all, is the coming-of-age
story of Ana.
It starts with an interview. A few weeks before graduating from college,
Ana drives three hours to Seattle to profile Christian for her school’s
newspaper (in the world of the movie, he’s a prominent entrepreneur and
philanthropist). It doesn’t take long for
us to realize that the meeting is a bust.
“To what do you owe your success?” Ana asks. Christian’s only response is a sneering
utterance: “Really?”
But then, you notice it.
Perched on the edge of his desk, Christian’s features form an expression
of peculiarly innocent excitement as he regards Ana. And Ana, barely daring to stare up at Christian
from her low-set chair, looks equally enraptured—intimated, but also
eager. They’re aroused by each other.
I need hardly mention that what follows is not, to use
Christian’s own words, a “hearts and flowers” romance. Oh sure, it begins benignly enough—Ana and
Christian enjoy a coffee date; exchange some teasing, flirtatious banter in the
hardware store where Ana works; and sleep together in a swank hotel room. But these moments are only the tip the
sadomasochist iceberg that is their affair.
Because just like Ms. James’ novel, the movie is about Ana’s shivering
fear of Christian’s violent desires and her determination to fulfill them, out
of both curiosity and adoration.
And
yet there’s more to “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Often, Ana is left alone in her bed, staring past her white sheets,
looking lonely and unfulfilled. And this
is the crux of the matter. Christian
likes her, cares about her, but does not love her—he is not, he insists,
capable of loving anyone. “Why won’t you
let me touch you?” Ana asks Christian pleadingly. In the moments where Ana is swept away by her
desire for Christian, the answer does not seem to matter. And yet the movie’s insistence that it does, that
its heroine needs love as much as sex, pops the proceedings off the tracks of lush
fantasy and into the embrace of sorrowful reality
Don’t
get me wrong; “Fifty Shades of Grey” is a terrifically entertaining movie, and
a well-timed one. After yet another
fruitful season of Oscar-friendly gloom and quirk, I found it absolutely thrilling
to walk into a multiplex at night—to hear couples and friends chatting and
laughing before, during, and after this slick, witty, and impeccably-staged
Hollywood movie (director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s ability to move effortlessly
from wide shots to close ups is what grants the prolonged chatter between
Christian and Ana cinematic motion).
Yet I
wouldn’t call “Fifty Shades of Grey” an R-rated popcorn picture. “NO” Ana tells Christian in the film’s final
scene as he moves to kiss her. That
moment is the invention of Ms. Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Kelly Marcel; the
book wrapped on a note of strained grief, with Ana alone, crying in the back of
a car. But Ana’s “NO” in the movie is
one of defiance, spoken by a woman who finally knows what she wants and what she
refuses to subject herself to ever again.
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