Fifty Shades Freed

Hav­ing com­plet­ed such cus­tom­ary roman­tic rit­u­als as the first date, the first fight and the first bare-skin flog­ging, Chris­t­ian Grey (Jamie Dor­nan) and Anas­ta­sia Steele (Dako­ta John­son) can hear wed­ding bells. Fifty Shades Dark­er con­clud­ed with pop culture’s pre­em­i­nent pow­er cou­ple resolv­ing to tie the knot, fol­low­ing a fiery con­fronta­tion between Christian’s moth­er and his schem­ing for­mer lover.

The image of Mar­cia Gay Hard­en slap­ping Kim Basinger in the face was an inspir­ing sight indeed, sug­gest­ing that the fran­chise was final­ly ready to embrace its own soap­i­ness and stop angling towards self-seri­ous­ness as the cen­tral pair­ing tran­si­tion into wed­lock. Direc­tor James Foley delights in his refusal to give his audi­ence what they so clear­ly want, how­ev­er. His is the cin­e­ma of edging.

Just as Chris­t­ian tor­ments Ana by bring­ing her to the brink of orgasm with­out push­ing her over, so too does Foley tease us with vague hints of an agree­ably campy inter­pre­ta­tion that he nev­er deliv­ers. Whoops of approval may wash over the crowd when Ana tells the slinky archi­tect mov­ing in on her man to get back in her ​“shit-coloured car” and return to Seat­tle, but this moment pro­vides only a brief blip of pleasure.

Every­thing in these films ought to feel like sex – except for the sex, which should be as pri­mal and scald­ing­ly hot as the shift­ing of tec­ton­ic plates. Instead, Foley goes with a visu­al and tonal pro­file that would be most accu­rate­ly char­ac­terised as ​“hornier-than-usu­al issue of Martha Stew­art Living.”

As before, Fifty Shades Freed basks in the ancil­lary perks that come bun­dled in with Ana’s rela­tion­ship to Chris­t­ian, rather than explor­ing the rela­tion­ship itself. The cam­era gawks more porno­graph­i­cal­ly at the gra­tu­itous footage of their hand­some­ly appoint­ed wood­land home, the luxe pri­vate jet they fly around in, and the taste­ful fab­ric of Ana’s wed­ding dress than the mate­r­i­al actu­al­ly verg­ing on pornog­ra­phy. The sex scenes remain tense, mechan­i­cal, sani­tised and almost hilar­i­ous­ly bereft of chem­istry. The most sadis­tic dynam­ic of all is the one between John­son and the three-pic­ture con­tract that won’t let her out of its vice­like grip.

Gen­er­ous dol­lops of extra­ne­ous non­sense – shout­ing match­es that break out for no good rea­son, an inane sub­plot involv­ing Ana’s for­mer boss and a kid­napped Rita Ora – kill the mood, though in truth there wasn’t much lust in the air to begin with. EL James’ source nov­els evinced an under­stand­ing of how sex works with­out grasp­ing the emo­tion­al cur­rents that make it worth hav­ing in the first place. Like­wise, Foley knows what a good rut­ting is sup­posed to look like, and not how it’s sup­posed to feel.

All the lip-bit­ing close­ups and chiaroscuro butt shots in the world won’t amount to a hill of beans with­out pas­sion. And while man­u­fac­tur­ing pas­sion is arguably the core duty of an actor, John­son and Dor­nan don’t eye one anoth­er like they’re erot­ic spar­ring part­ners. They don’t even real­ly behave like a cou­ple. They’re cowork­ers, who some­times have to lick each other’s nipples.