Determined to get out the house, Lee takes a typing test and applies for work as a secretary with a local lawyer. As she arrives for the interview, she walks into a ransacked office. The previous secretary is storming out with her belongings packed in a box. Creepy boss, E Edward Grey (James Spader) keeps the interview simple. Is she pregnant? Does she intend to get pregnant? Does she live alone? Is she married? He seems happy with her answers but warns her that she’s overqualified and the job will bore her to death. She tells him she wants to be bored. She likes dull work. The job is hers.

The film then charts the increasingly bizarre SM relationship between the two characters, the harsher the Spader character treats her, the further she wants him to go. When he tells her he’s accidentally thrown out some notes, she climbs into the garbage bin to search for them; he makes her crawl around behind the furniture in the office, laying mouse traps; insults the way she dresses/her nervous habits and her frequent bad spelling and typing mistakes just make things worse. The manual typewriter which types up the titles at the start of the film, and on which Spader insists she types all his letters is the ultimate means of control. A seemingly innocuous instrument by way of which all manner of humiliation and punishment can be meted out.

When he brings up the subject of her self-mutilation and orders her never to do it again, her life is changed forever. She starts walking home, rather than taking a lift from her equally needy mother who sits outside the office in her car all day, waiting to drive her back; begins masturbating with gusto and has a lack lustre relationship with a local man, who is also recovering from a nervous breakdown. All her feelings are reserved for Spader, though. Lee needs to be told what to do and what not to do. Given his permission, she feels both free and as if she is being held by him.

A thoughtfully and subtly sexy take on the sexual politics of the workplace and the suppressed human need to be controlled and take control of others. The theme is desire, rather than fetishism and this is beautifully underplayed in the restraint of the sexual scenes, giving the whole film an unexpected tenderness. Spader was obviously the ideal candidate to play the shy, perfectionist boss, having carved out his entire career on such roles. Maggie Gyllenhaal is vulnerably enchanting, bringing a great depth to her character despite screenwriter Erin Cressidy Wilson’s effectively sparse and restrained script, adapted from Mary Gaitskill’s short story, ‘Bad Behaviour.’ A delightfully offbeat, engaging smack of a film, from exciting new second time director, Steven Shainberg, which left me, like Lee, gasping for more.

Laura Hird is the Orange and Whitbread nominated author of the collection, ‘Nail and Other Stories’ and novel, ‘Born Free.’ Her short stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies internationally. Her new collection of short stories is due to be published by Canongate Books in May 2005. She runs and edits her own loosely arts-related website on which she seeks out and publishes new poetry, short stories, reviews, interviews etc. She was born and lives in Edinburgh.

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.