Fifty Shades of Grey, the movie adaptation of E.L. James’s best-selling porn novel, screened for the press last week at Showplace ICON, in a room jammed with feverish women. But I wanted to see it again in IMAX, on a seven-story screen, because I was curious whether the movie could be blown up any bigger than it already has been. Every opinion writer in America has something to say about Fifty Shades—Newsweek has even published a special issue, “Fifty Shades Phenomenon: Exploring the Sexual Revolution,” which promises to take readers inside the secret world of BDSM. You can stroll into Target now and buy the official Fifty Shades of Grey lubricant and Fifty Shades of Grey vibrator. The hype is getting bigger and bigger, the tension building up inside me, and oh God, I think I’m going to . . .
Fortunately for moviegoers, screenwriter Kelly Marcel has jettisoned the excruciating narration and mined Ana and Christian’s insipid, incessant flirtation for the cleverest dialogue. Parts of the novel made me laugh out loud, though the writing was so weak that I could never be sure the comedy was intentional; director Sam Taylor-Johnson, best known for her John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, has seized on the more absurd aspects of the book, and her movie sometimes comes across as a satire of modern romance. At one point Ana (Dakota Johnson) and Christian (Jamie Dornan) sit across a table in his red-lit conference room, negotiating the contract between dominant and submissive that he insists she sign before they start horsing around in his BDSM rumpus room. “Find anal fisting,” says Ana, going over the document with a pencil. “Strike it out.” She also rules out vaginal fisting and genital clamps; as they work, two Nordic blond beauties on his staff pad in silently to serve them glasses of white wine.
Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson
