Fifty Shades of Grey

“If you were mine you wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.” Chris­t­ian Grey (Jamie Dor­nan) is remov­ing his top, reveal­ing a ripped tor­so. ​“Whaaat?” responds Anas­ta­sia (Dako­ta John­son). She is sit­ting in the tor­ment­ed billionaire’s bed, busy munch­ing toast. She isn’t post-coital. They haven’t even kissed yet. Now top­less, Chris­t­ian pounces onto the bed. Land­ing on all fours, he takes a car­niv­o­rous bite out of Anastasia’s… toast.

There are many scenes like this in direc­tor Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adap­ta­tion of EL James’ best­selling erot­ic nov­el, scenes in which Christian’s pen­chant for lay­ing on sex­u­al pun­ish­ment is under­cut by Anastasia’s pep­py scep­ti­cism. The book has a rep­u­ta­tion for being a com­pendi­um of ridicu­lous lines. The film is enter­tain­ing because it under­stands the humour of the mate­r­i­al and milks the exchanges with know­ing delight.

Jamie Dor­nan plays it straight as the mys­te­ri­ous, hand­some Grey, while Dako­ta Johnson’s bold ingénue has as much spunk as she does curios­i­ty. Said spunk pow­ers an odd-cou­ple rom-com that just hap­pens to verge into sado­masochis­tic ter­ri­to­ry — or as Chris­t­ian calls it, ​“the play­room.” Instead of quiv­er­ing and suc­cumb­ing to wild roman­tic propo­si­tions like Mills & Boon hero­ines of yore, Anas­ta­sia reacts with chal­leng­ing ques­tions. ​“You’re so bossy,” she gig­gles at one point. He real­ly is.

The sex takes awhile to get going, with action lin­ger­ing around the ten­sion that fol­lows Anas­ta­sia and Christian’s meet-cute in his cav­ernous office. He is a cel­e­brat­ed for­mer stu­dent and she is there to inter­view him for the col­lege paper. He is order­ly and likes tak­ing con­trol. She asks inap­pro­pri­ate ques­tions and falls over as soon as pos­si­ble. He likes that, and pur­sues her with mon­ey as much as any­thing else. In one safe­ty-reg­u­la­tion flout­ing scene, he gazes into her eyes while fly­ing a per­son­al helicopter.

She enjoys the atten­tion but balks at the idea of sign­ing a con­tract bind­ing her to be a ​‘sub’. Despite being a con­trol freak, he neglects his busi­ness empire to effi­cient­ly stalk her, torn between a self-inter­est­ed desire to dom­i­nate her and a con­scious-dri­ven yearn­ing to let this inno­cent girl be free. They are with­in a hair’s breadth of kiss­ing when he cries, ​“I’m not the man for you! You should steer clear of me! I should let you go!”

Of course he can’t let her go, because this film needs soft-fade nudie mon­tages and the oppor­tu­ni­ty for Chris­t­ian to utter dur­ing an anguished finale: ​“I’m fifty shades of fucked up…” The sex is pret­ty mild. Despite an ear­ly guid­ed tour through a well-stocked S&M room and con­tract nego­ti­a­tions involv­ing anal fist­ing, the main dish is light bondage. The whole film is shot with syrupy smooth­ness but this is nev­er more appar­ent than when they’re fuck­ing. Clothes glide off, close-ups kiss naked flesh, a t‑shirt becomes a blind­fold and John­son game­ly moans and writhes.

Scriptwriter Kel­ly Mar­cel does a great job of mount­ing a haul of swollen, pas­sion­ate lines atop the whirring back and forth of rela­tion­ship dynam­ics. Dako­ta John­son is a rev­e­la­tion both in Christian’s com­pa­ny and out of it, both in her clothes and out of them. This is her sto­ry. One about a young woman fig­ur­ing out her sex­u­al bound­aries and what she needs and wants from an inti­mate relationship.

This every­day process is expe­dit­ed and drama­tised by the exis­tence of Chris­t­ian Grey — a dash­ing, dam­aged Mr Rochester whose per­son­al para­dox is that he likes Anas­ta­sia because she makes him want to be more than a dom­i­nant. And yet he is who he is. The sto­ry of the film con­cerns how much sex­u­al com­pro­mise she can take in the name of desire. Dare we call it a female cumming-of-ager?