(2001) On the day of her sister's wedding, Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) leaves a mental institution, having been treated for self-inflicted wounds, and enters a madhouse. I do not recommend this twisted romance of sadomasochism from director Steven Shainberg, who adapted a story by Mary Gaitskill to screenplay, though I'd enjoy listening to the soundtrack again.

But in case you're still interested, Lee returns to her parents' house from which her alcoholic father departs after again abusing her mother. Witnessing the altercation, the innocent, vulnerable young woman, who keeps a variety of sharp objects in a special box, burns the inside of her thigh with a hot kettle; she's been cutting herself since 7th grade.

Excelling at typing but lacking any previous work experience or references, she applies for a secretarial job at the law office of E. Edward Grey (James Spader). "Are you pregnant?" asks Mr Grey: "Do you plan on getting pregnant?" Receiving negative replies, he tells her to get him a cup of coffee with sugar.

The work is dull and repetitive - typing, answering the phone, getting coffee, checking mousetraps - without computers, but Lee likes boring (at the institution she was just getting used to the simple routines). Another woman in the office, a paralegal, snubs her; Mr Grey's estranged wife Tricia (from whom he hides in his office closet) stops by with a message: "Tell him to sign the settlement."

After Edward espies Lee kissing Peter (Jeremy Davies), her boyfriend from high school, at a Laundromat, his demeanor, previously indifferent but soft-spoken, alters toward Lee, snappishly critical of any typos, which he angrily circles with a red marker. Additionally he cruelly denigrates her appearance and habit of sniffling, all of which she submissively accepts as "helpful suggestions" toward becoming the best of secretaries.

Aware of her sewing kit and the Band-Aids on her upper thighs (seen while she was attending to mousetraps), he bluntly interrogates her: "Why do you cut yourself?" Then he offers his analysis: Is it to bring the pain inside to the surface in order to perceive evidence of actual existence, followed by the comfort of watching a wound heal? Finally he makes her promise to never again cut herself.

Calling Lee into his inner office after finding more typos, Edward commands her to bend forward, put her hands on his desk, and begin reading the letter with the scarlet-encircled, offending mistakes; as she recites, he repeatedly spanks her rump with force. "Now straighten yourself up," he orders, "and go type it again." For her part, she feels ecstatic when he later stops by with praise for the revised copy of the letter.

She looks forward to punishments, but after an exceedingly strange incident in his office, he ceases further criticisms and spankings; she desperately attempts to rekindle their former warped relationship.

On her wedding day (having acquiesced to Peter's marriage proposal), Lee submits to a three-day ordeal of fasting and suffering to prove her devotion to the man she loves; during this self-imposed tribulation, her father returns to say: "Your soul and your body are your own to do with as you wish." Not exactly what feminists had in mind when they demanded the right to choose.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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