Secretary

By EWAN MCDONALD

(Herald rating: * * * )

We live in strange times. Two teen idols perform a choreographed routine featuring two little leather and too much silicone during the halftime break of a televised football match and a nation erupts in moral indignation. A few months earlier this film, featuring one of Hollywood's movie sweethearts and a primetime TV star, celebrating sado-madochism and other practices that aren't contemplated in our employment legislation, wins the top prize at the Sundance Festival, staged in conservative Idaho.

Maggie Gyllenhaal (Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, Adaptation), plays Lee Holloway, who has just graduated in self-harm at a psychiatric institution and lands a job as secretary to an eccentric lawyer, Edward Grey (James Spader, who has been a long-running character in The Practice but is possibly best known for sex, lies and videotape).

Lee has a boyfriend, Peter (Jeremy Davies), but finds herself attracted to her hard-edged boss. You may think this makes her, to use the current phrase, a slapper, and you'd be right.

Sado-masochistic encounters ensue on Mahogany Row, though Grey does not seem to be the sort of guy to commit. Well, commit anything but a sound spanking, that is; Lee has to make all the running in this relationship. For once, however, she doesn't have to beat herself up about it; she has Grey to do that for her.

There are some unusual messages here, weakly justified in the DVD commentaries, which don't stand up to serious consideration.

Based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill and scripted by Erin Cressida Wilson, it is suggested that this is a tale of female empowerment. Less kindly minds may see it as more of a typical Hollywood fantasy role-play of late-night pay-channel soft porn, and more darkly of male power/female subjugation. Apparently her victory is to stop harming herself because she's found someone else who will.

On the DVD you'll find a little behind-the-scenes footage in the Making of ... feature. Gyllenhaal gives her take on the role in an interview section while director Steven Shainberg explains the background to the project with scriptwriter Wilson.

For those who want to find them, there are debates on such edifying topics as sado-masochism, Little Red Riding Hood and the best ways to create spanking noises on film.

* DVD, video rental March 11