Review of Secretary (2002) by Michael Y — 13 Oct 2010

Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader star in this complicated, weird, sick, and beautiful dark comedy about the nature of love and self esteem pain.

Gyllenhaal stars as a woman who has hidden emotional problems which she expresses by hurting herself. In her efforts to get well she is highered as a secretary for a lawyer, (Spader). But the lawyer has his own personal problems as well. But strange enough they are connected by their problems and they feed off eachother's stress in KINKY ways. This movie is quite hilarious at times, but it is also very personal and touching. This movie's story is able to connect with it's audience very well because of how deep and personal it's subject is. This is made possible with the wonderful preformances of Gyllenhaal and Spader.

The plain suburbian surrounding plays very well with the "out of place" theme of the movie. But it can also be very visually expressive when it narrorates Gyllenhaal's character. There are shots that really show her character's lonlyness in the world, complimented by a soft music score.

This is the kind of movie that one should really watch twice because there are certian emotional elements is the actor's character that are not noticed until you finnish watching the movie. And by looking back and evaluating the movie you can finally see how touching the story is and how brilliantly the leading actor's preformance is.