Based on a relationship between a billionaire and a girl who works in a hardware store, the film explores romance from the perspective of BDSM, something that you don’t normally see in the romance genre, certainly not in the mainstream romantic genre. Throughout the films runtime there is a power-play between the two main characters as they try to establish exactly how the whole dominant and submissive thing is actually going to work.
Firstly, being a mainstream film being aimed at the wider audience this is certainly the most raunchiest film that’s been made in the last 20 to 25 years. There’s a lot of nudity, a lot of sex and a lot of pubes... like a hell of a lot... like pubes for days. It certainly pushes the boundaries visually of what we would see in a sex scene nowadays, especially since ratings boards have become so sensitive towards things of a sexual nature however I don’t think it has the sweatiness and rawness of other sexual adventure films of the past like ‘Two Moon Junction’, ‘Nine and a Half Weeks‘ and ‘Last Tango in Paris.‘
You certainly can’t argue that the film is beautifully shot. Every scene looks like a high end commercial for cologne or suits or cars or even coffee. I’m pretty sure you could cut the dialogue out of this film and edit together the footage with some fancy music and it would just feel like one long extended commercial for Chanel. This is easily in part because of the inclusion of Jamie Dornan, the model turned actor, who does give an intense smolder whenever he is on screen - he knows how to wear a suit, he knows how to look good driving a car and he knows how to whip the living bejesus out of a bare-ass and make it look like it’s all been done on a cat-walk.
Dakota Johnson is incredibly brave to do so much full-frontal nudity in this film, but based on the audience I saw this with, you know the target audience, I’m pretty sure she was not the one they wanted to see full-frontal. She does her lip-biting best in the role and she displays that vulnerability very well throughout the whole 125 minutes of the film, but I just don’t buy why a billionaire uber-confident business man control freak who always gets what he wants would go to such great lengths to pursue her. It’s nothing that Johnson has done with the character it is just the the character is underwritten in the film and doesn’t quite deliver that “you’re everything I never realised I wanted” that Christian Grey so desires.
There’s one great scene which is best described as the contract negotiation. The character’s play this scene so straight and deliver lots of blush-inducing sexual-verbal content that it would normally feel more at place in a Seth Rogen movie.
There’s obviously a lot of sexual politics to discuss within this movie: is it feminist or anti-feminist? Is it romantic or is it domestic violence? I think they are valid questions and I think everyone is going to have their own interpretation come the end of the film. I guess for me, looking at the whole dominant and submissive roles being played up in the film, I don’t think that either role stays true it’s definition. For a man intent on being the Dominant, he gives up to his submissive’s demands a lot, often in the same scene - she’ll demand something, he’ll say no, pause and then says ok. For a billionaire used to getting his way it’s seems strange that he so quickly gives up his ground at every turn based on the version of Anastasia Steele presented in this film.
Overall the film has struck a balance to show the raunch to a mainstream audience without being run out of town with pitchforks, and mostly because some of the more risqué scenes from the book were removed. For the most part it is very faithful to the book, but for a film all about climaxing, the ending feels very anti-climatic.
Fifty Shades of Grey gets Three pubes, and Two erect nipples out of Five.
No comments:
Post a Comment