Directed by:
Sam Taylor-JohnsonScreenplay:
Kelly MarcelCinematography:
Seamus McGarveyComposer:
Danny ElfmanCast:
Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle, Eloise Mumford, Victor Rasuk, Luke Grimes, Marcia Gay Harden, Rita Ora, Max Martini, Callum Keith Rennie (more)VOD (4)
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Fifty Shades of Grey, is the film adaptation of the bestselling book that has become a global phenomenon. Since its release, the "Fifty Shades" trilogy has been translated into 51 languages worldwide and sold more than 100 million copies in e-book and print—making it one of the biggest and fastest-selling book series ever. (Universal Pictures US)
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”What are butt plugs?” I haven't read the book and I don’t know what the sequel is about, nor am I an expert on female sexuality. Therefore, please take this review only as the comments of a lay observer who would, however, give this film a two-star rating regardless of what he has or has not learned from it. ___ Fifty Shades of Grey exposes the rules of traditional romantic dramas and pushes them to the extreme with an anticlimactic story of the awakening of a naïve romantic who discovers, in addition to her own identity, the male-dominated world of market capitalism (“Welcome to my world”). With his cold-blooded business approach and acquisitiveness, Grey is the perfect prototype of a man as capitalist, convinced of his own superiority. He understands relationships as business transactions, prior to which it is necessary to negotiate the most favourable conditions (“I don’t do romance”). He buys and Ana sells, both literally and figuratively. He showers a woman with expensive gifts and “fucks her hard”, in exchange for which she humbly submits to him. He manages to convince her that freedom is gained through giving up responsibility. If a woman does not respect his rules, she will be punished. At the same time, the scenes with his domineering mother and memories of his relationship with his partner, who has subjugated him, indicate that Grey’s need for eroticised domination stems from his fear of women or rather loss of control over what makes him a man according to the current social order. ___ In her inexperience, Ana guilelessly accepts the rules of a world in which male pleasure takes priority over all else, in which a feeling of humiliation is determinative for the woman, in which the man is active (not only in sex) and the woman is passive. She does not know any other rules and for the purposes of the wonderfully straightforward narrative with black-and-white characters, it is not even desirable that she would know them. For Ana, the opportunity to submit to a man is a privilege for which she rewards the man in question by preparing breakfast (the way in which Ana takes on her role as a homemaker, as if it’s a matter of course, can also be perceived as the fulfilment of a male fantasy). It is only gradually, as she goes down the S&M rabbit hole, that she discovers who she really is (through sexuality, among other things) and begins to understand that being a woman does not mean being a tool for others, sharing everything (including a sandwich prepared for dinner) and becoming invisible. She slowly brings her own rules into Grey’s world along with her own ways of getting pleasure (“It's you that’s changing me”). ___ Despite that, the relationship remains unfulfilled according to the principles of melodrama. Peculiarly, the reason that he and she do not end up happily in each other’s arms is the knowledge of what the man really desires and what it means to be a woman. Fulfilling Grey’s fantasies – and thus playing the role that he requires from her – does not give Ana satisfaction. I would therefore like to believe that the blandness of the relatively tame and too brief erotic scenes (with music that kills any excitement) was the filmmaker’s intention. The film is at its sexiest when the characters only talk about sex and the story remains in the realm of the unrealised fantasies of the female protagonist, who thus controls the narrative and has the man under her power for at least a moment (the conversation over the contract). Conversely, Ana loses all of her power during the erotic games played out according to Grey’s fantasies. From a certain perspective, the empty-seeming ending and the lack of physical eroticism (in terms of both duration and explicitness) are not a mistake, but an attempt to undermine the androcentric vision and understanding of the world as it is represented by dozens of other romantic films about invisible women and dominant men (to go even further beyond the limits of valid interpretation, the discontinuity of the editing and the jumps during the scene involving Ana’s first sexual encounter could also be read as an expression of her personal “paradigmatic break”). 50%
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Pretty Woman 2. Over time, everyone waves their hand over it as shallow and often predictable when it captures the current times so accurately, with a hint of irresistible glamour. But now it's trendy to complain about how uninteresting the erotica is and how bland the acting is, while these are rather unjustified jabs in the style of "the crowd says it's crap, so I say it too". We will see what reflection society will have apart from traditional Bond films in 2035, but by then Fifty Shades of Grey will definitely be close to being in the red numbers, if FilmBooster and the internet as we know it today still exist at all.
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So I watched it and surprising I don’t have the urge to trash this modern romance. In the end, this dumb (not as cute as in the Transformers) and senseless story comes to some conclusion. Quite surprising, if you didn’t watch the spoilers. It doesn’t even completely slip into an outright American Pie. In terms of actors, this a terrible bunch of unlikeable people, the only one who is sort of nice is (that pathologically disturbed) Mr. Grey. My girlfriend fell asleep after the first kiss and I dropped of when I thought that it must already be the end (about 10 minutes before it really ended). I finished watching on Labor Day. Everything taken care of now. P.S.: Elfman’s music was very pleasant.
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I didn't have any preconceptions and I thought that it couldn't be as bad as they say. But it was. Two hours of shallow boredom revolving around a theme that tells me absolutely nothing and after watching it hasn't started to say anything and won't start to, plus a rather unsympathetic dummy in the lead role and his handsome, but extremely bloodless partner. However, on the other hand, I understand that Fifty Shades has found its audience and will continue to do so, because many people seem to crave such adventures. So please, go ahead, I won't disturb you in this game room.
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I can’t shake the feeling that marketing-wise, this is the most lucrative slushy romance I’ve ever seen. And I only watched it because I expected some sort of a breakthrough in the world cinematography. But nothing happened except for one strange relationship that doesn’t really show us anything; just a bit of whipping and one very modest torture chamber. Dorian Gray might be a psycho, but he still acts rationally and so nothing truly bad happens to Dakota. The ending was weak because I know that Dakota’s dominance won’t last very long.
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