Fifty Shades of Grey

Dir: Sam Taylor-Johnson

2015

*

I haven't read the best selling novel by E. L. James that this film is adapted from and quite frankly, I'm never going to. I don't think I've heard anything positive said about it and it really doesn't sound like it's the sort of thing I'd enjoy. However, that hasn't stopped me before. I'm no 'best seller' snob either, I'll read what I want without any regard to public opinion because that's the kind of open-minded free thinker I am. The real reason I'm not interested in reading Fifty Shades of Grey is because it is in fact originally written for a Twilight fan-fiction website. Fan-fiction fantasists have been going for decades, most of them are cheap romance rip-offs that slowly descend into dirty talk. I read one once based on the original Star Trek series. It was about Kirk and Spook's secret desire for each other. I read it quite by chance thinking it was something else but it was actually quite well written and rather funny but certainly never serious. Fifty Shades of Grey was originally titled Master of the Universe (I probably would have read it again by accident if it still was) and was all about Edward and Bella getting somewhat frisky with each other. It was promptly removed from the website and E. L. James decided to develop it further. Its initial appeal was said to be among married women in their thirties and various publishers began to describe it as 'Mommy porn'. A deeply unpleasant thought, and a little stupid too, especially as Mills & Boon had been doing this sort of thing for decades. It really isn't anything new. The thing that really got people talking, apart from a rather clever whispering campaign, was that it featured BDSM (bondage, dominance, submission and sadomasochism). I'm a bit surprised that this kind of thing is still shocking to many people, each to their own, I can only imagine it became a best seller because everyone is secretly interested, it's either that or society has become so dictated to, so desperate to have something to complain about and so uninteresting that this is seen as a major thrill, but I'm sure that's not it. 'Live and let live', that's what I say but I also say 'do your research'. My biggest issue with the whole thing is that it is quite clear that E. L. James has wondered into a world she knows very little about. Injecting a supposed romantic element into a subservient story of submission is okay if you do it properly but she hasn't. There is a certain formula to romantic novels and a certain formula to sexy books. By all means do something new, but break the formula if you do. First love and anal fisting don't really work together. If it was meant to be a provocative stand against the norm or something of a rebellion against formula then great, but it isn't, for starters E. L. James can't tell a story to save her life. The film seems to suffer the same issues as the book, in that sense it could be regarded as a faithful adaptation, but you'd have to ask someone who has read it and will admit to it. The tone of the film is all wrong. The flighty music that accompanies the bondage scenes doesn't strike me as an intentional attempt post-modernist irony, just a poor creative decision. The light-hearted way our submissive leading lady declares she won't be partaking in vaginal clamping, as if she was the same as drinking caffeine late at night or swimming straight after lunch, is laughably worrying. It's not trying to be satirical, it wants the audience to take it seriously. I thought I might be astonished by the spanking bits but instead I was perplexed and left agog as to what the film makers would try and convince us of next. It is a romantic film about bondage that isn't the least bit romantic and that features very little bondage. The acting is terrible, the script is amazingly bad and the mood, tone, structure are all wrong and there really isn't any story to speak of. You just know that everyone involved probably think the last scene was striking and bold but the truth is it is probably the worst filmed/written in the last twenty years.