Directed by: Sam Taylor-Johnson
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle
One Hundred Million Copies Sold. One Hundred Million! That’s the number of books bought mostly by women, of the shallow, somewhat kinky trilogy poorly written by E.L. James. It was originally a self-published e-book as well as a print-on-demand volume. Someone at Vintage Books spotted it and they obtained the rights in 2012. So successful was it in worldwide distribution, that it put the terms “Mommy Porn” and “Softcore Sexy” into our permanent vocabulary. So of course it had to be made into a movie.
The problem is, the film-makers so sanitized it, that they gutted what should be the “steamy sex” like you gut a fish, and removed anything and everything that could remotely be construed as offensive. Slick is the term I’d choose to describe the style of film-making here, all chrome and no tarnish. It’s style without any substance.
Here’s the storyline:
This, the first installment of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy, begins the off-center “Cinderella” story of Anastasia Steele (Johnson), an innocent and naive college literature student who falls under the spell of Christian Grey (Dornan), the highly successful young business magnate whom she interviews for the school newspaper.
She is instantly smitten by him, as he is drawn inexplicably to her open innocence and beauty. They start seeing each other. As they begin to get closer to one another, he starts to seduce her into his secret sexual world of dominance and submission. However, Christian, a total control freak who “Does not do the romance thing,” wishes not just to possess her, but rather to “own” her, psychologically and sexually. Her innocent curiosity and overwhelming attraction to him moves her to accept his advances and she slowly begins to explore his ‘singular tastes’.
What’s missing here is chemistry, steamy, hot, down and dirty attraction. The camera provides it instead of the actors. With clever angles, the editor has succeeded in creating something that is just not there between the two principal stars, tension and fascination. It’s almost as if the two of them are using different scripts. Dornan is so humorless, he becomes a caricature, the complete opposite of Johnson, who presents us with a real, feeling, breathing human being.
Of course there’s lots of nudity, but it’s all pretty tame. Where it should be explicit, it’s rather dull, where it should be passionate it’s like an instructional sex manual. The only moment that could really be considered steamy is when Christian takes Ana’s virginity. That is the only scene that catches and presents what should be the essence of their passion.
The brightest spot in the whole film, the thing worth your trip to the movies, is Dakota Johnson, who by the way is the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, granddaughter of Tippi Hedren. She’s a brilliant young actress, fearless, and impressive. I can’t wait to see her in something more substantial. She’s got three more films coming out soon, so I guess I won’t have to wait too long.
My take, It’s not really a date film, not really a guy thing, not really honest about D/s relationships, but if you want a little sexual fantasy, you might want to watch it. However, if you don’t, don’t feel bad for the film, it’s going to make a pile of bucks!
