Secretary: Cult Cinema Far from the Mainstream

 

I saw Secretary more than twenty years ago in a nearly empty theater. It was a strange and dark film that barely lasted a few days in theaters. It belonged to that family of uncomfortable movies like Showgirls, Live Flesh, or Crash by Cronenberg. You know you have to watch them even if you sense that almost no one will understand them. It reminded me of the nights when, as a teenager, I would sneak off to watch Mexican transgressive cinema on state channels late at night, hidden from my parents. Secretary was uncomfortable the way so many works that use art to provoke are uncomfortable.

Mary Gaitskill, author of the original story, drew inspiration from the restless literature of Jean Genet. She wrote from her own experience as a secretary and from a curious look at consensual sadomasochism. Gaitskill and director Steven Shainberg presented the story each in their own way, without explanations, without demonizing it, and without romanticizing it. They left morality outside the work. More than an erotic film, we were looking at a cold, hard, and direct study of human sexuality in its strangest form.

Belle de Jour, the surrealist jewel by Luis Buñuel, was a mandatory reference. It was impossible not to feel the atmosphere of Crash by Cronenberg as well, the same one that years later would shape Fight Club by Fincher. The presence of the perversely androgynous James Spader, both in Secretary and in Crash, worked as a clear signal of the dark and twisted nature of both films. Maggie Gyllenhaal gave herself completely in the most unsettling scenes, and with that performance she opened the path to her bold career as a director.

Shainberg raised the film into the territory of art cinema through precise references: the literature of Sade, the music of Leonard Cohen, the painting of Balthus, the designs of Miuccia Prada, and the work of Hans Bellmer. It is regrettable that the impact of Gaitskill’s story and Shainberg’s film later diluted into works like the adaptations of E.L. James’s books. It is no coincidence that the protagonist of Fifty Shades of Grey carries the same last name as Spader’s character. Though it must also be said clearly: without Secretary, the monumental Nymphomaniac by Lars von Trier might never have existed.