Love Hurts: OH, HI! and TWINLESS and SPLITSVILLE

Too often small movies these days have a concept or a premise and then leave it there, flatlining for the rest of the run time. I yearn for these movies to discover a second, let alone a third, gear. Take the acidic relationship comedy Oh, Hi!, for instance. Here writer-director Sophie Brooks delivers a fine hook. A young couple is on a weekend vacation at a sleepy rural cabin far from the city. She (Molly Gordon) is head-over-heels for him (Logan Lerman). After a nice day of boyfriend-girlfriend fun, they’re cuddled up in bed when he admits that he’s way less serious about this relationship than she is. Bad move. She leaves him handcuffed to the headboard and insists she’ll win him over. Visions of Stephen King (Misery meets Gerald’s Game, perhaps) dance in this darkly funny inciting incident. She’s desperate to keep him, and the literal vision of that neediness twists with a biting mania. Unfortunately, the movie’s exactly as stuck as the guy is. The initial provocation is startling and silly, and the early dialogue just past this development has a tense ping-ponging triangulation as each party tries to say the right things to unlock the next right step. But as it goes on, Brooks doesn’t quite know how to bring it to a resolution. Some late additions to the cast fall flat despite their appealing presences because the comedy grows sitcom loopy and the last lingering strands of emotional intelligence dissipate. The performances are committed, and the movie’s blessedly short. But it still runs out of ideas by the halfway mark and then just repeats itself until finding a pretty limp final beat to play. 

For a movie with more than a couple good moves past its premise to offer, there’s Twinless. Writer-director James Sweeney’s dark relationship dramedy has an even better hook. Sweeney plays a gay loner who meets a depressed straight guy (Dylan O’Brien) in a support group for people who are mourning the death of their twins. They become unlikely friends. At first I was worried the movie tips its hand with an obvious twist. I was dreading waiting the next hour or more for the reveal. Instead, it almost immediately lets us know that it knows we know that (mild spoiler) Sweeney doesn’t have a twin. The betrayal has layers of deception, and as he gets closer and closer to the other man so desperately and earnestly reaching out for companionship in his loneliness and grief, the movie’s tone is all the more filled with sickly sweet tension and a sensitive queasiness. Here’s a movie so tightly attuned to both characters in this situation that it doesn’t short-change the compounded psychological damage that brought them together and is brewing a sad reveal. We’re waiting for the characters to notice the twist we’ve already been shown. Sweeney gives it all a soft wit and sharp eye, developing the characters’ awkwardness and neediness and slowly developing connection. The writing has clever construction, and there’s intentionality in the visual flourishes, too, like a casually masterful split-screen journey through a party in which the halves of the frame separate, wander, and then rejoin. And the performances feel just real enough, from Sweeney’s cringing vulnerability and awkwardly hidden secrets, to O’Brien’s convincingly inhabited fumbling through pain in a hunched posture and tight jaw. (When flashbacks to his cocky twin make it a double role, it’s all the more impressive.) The picture’s all of a piece in a melancholic and unusual situation in which two people are too entangled to make a clean break. There’s no real satisfying resolution on the offer, but it’s decent enough to sit in the ambiguities of a situation that maybe can’t resolve without something tenuous and sad. 

It’s Michael Angelo Covino’s Splitsville, however, that offers the most robust indie relationship dramedy in quite some time. What a relief to see a movie that starts with a provocative idea and then keeps building through the implications and consequences until we arrive at a dizzy screwball finale as natural as it is surprising. It’s about time one of these actually gave us characters with places to go and people to see and changes to make. It not only has a meaty first act, it has a second, and a third, each more propulsive and entertaining than the last. It stars co-writer Kyle Marvin as a well-meaning dope blindsided when his stunning wife (Adria Arjona) asks him for a divorce. He runs, literally, to his friends’ vacation home, where, as he whines over glasses of wine, his best friend (Covino) tries to cheer him up by admitting that he and his wife (Dakota Johnson) have decided to be non-monogamous. Marvin laughs it off until, late at night, he wonders if it was an invitation. Later, upon returning to his soon-to-be-ex-wife, he wonders if they should try that arrangement, too, instead of divorce. What follows is a riot of modern befuddlement over gender roles, sexual mores, and relationship norms as what people find exciting or even just plausible in theory, is pretty complicated once real feelings and bodies get involved.

It follows a couple marriages that threaten to turn into the Marx Brothers routine in which too many people pile into too small a room. It keeps up a brisk pace of hilarious line-readings, brisk banter, clever reversals, and surprising, only slightly heightened, sight gags, and then gives it all an undertow of serious emotional stakes. It follows the twists and turns of its characters’ whims as they can’t get out of their own ways, double back to try to provoke jealousy, then scramble more as their plans end up manipulating themselves more than others. It’s a movie of anxious tap-dancing over inevitable confusion, constantly second-guessing if they’re with the right person or making the right plans for the future. How apt for a society that feels perpetually on the brink of pulling apart these days. The movie’s blend of nervy humanism, too-easy sex, and Millennial neuroticism matches well with its vulgarity and its anything-goes permissiveness that has a sharp spine of regret and bewilderment. The performances are as energetic and committed as its script, and, though it occasionally threatens to play like a vanity project to pair its writer and director as actors with gorgeous scene-partners, it’s ultimately too self-critical and breezily open to fleshing out even the bit players with meaty, complicated humanity to succumb. It’s a feat of writing and directing to kick up all this mess and keep messing until it lands with a relaxed inevitability that actually cares about the fates of these flawed and fumbling people. 

Songland: THE HIGH NOTE

The High Note is a fluffily charming movie that wraps you up in the warm pleasures of its plotting, with exactly the right proportion of predictable to surprising that keeps you interested. It’s two showbiz dramas in one — with an aspiring record producer (Dakota Johnson) trying to get a step up while she’s working as personal assistant to a singer (Tracee Ellis Ross) whose star might be on the decline if she doesn’t try something new soon. Then the whole thing is wrapped up in the embrace of a PG-rated vision of the industry, a showbiz fantasy with sparkling talents and pearly teeth, sweet coincidences, fabulous architecture, and, yes, as Aretha Franklin might say, great gowns. It’s the sort of movie where all the struggling assistant needs is the right sympathetic ear and the right moment — and where her thankless low-paying job still keeps her comfortable in a nice apartment. Besides, the star she’s working for is awfully gentle for a demanding celebrity. She has occasional barbs, but theirs is often a prickly friendship at worst. Even her manger (Ice Cube) is too warm to be threatening, even when he glowers at the young woman to stay in her lane when she criticizes a bigwig producer in the recording studio, overstepping her job title. It’s a comfortable drama, enough to invest in without worrying overmuch it’ll swerve into real pain. It’s a movie where the misunderstandings and disagreements feel just real enough to matter, and just light enough that they’ll melt away at the right moments.

It works because the screenplay by Flora Greeson is cozily built out of its mirrored showbiz tales—fading star meets rising talent, and maybe they can both help each other—and then further draws in elements of family dramas—that the leads are talented second-generation stars adds some extra-textual frisson—and romance while keeping things amusing and heartfelt. The younger woman starts falling for a sweet young singer-songwriter (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), with whom she has a Meet Cute discussion about The O.C.’s theme song. It’s one of those sequences so perfectly, simultaneously fresh and cliche that it’s worth a little swoon as the charming grins spring up on the actors’ faces. And the cast is the ultimate reason why the film works. One could imagine all sorts of lesser talents letting the movie potentially get bogged down in its plotty particulars. Instead, Johnson dances across each line reading with her voice flitting across the dialogue, deftly drawing out insecurities and flirtations, talents and frustrations. She moves with casual caution, wanting to do a good job, but also trying to lean in and get a leg up. Ross, too, is strong. She swaggers with a fine balance of down-to-earth and head-in-the-clouds, passionate about her career, but frustrated by limitations she’s feeling. Not the cold distance of a Devil Wears Prada, she’s often friendly, but capable of cutting with harsh angles. It’s a fine pairing. Director Nisha Ganatra (here much better served by this script than last year’s flat Late Night) gives the film a nice glossy shine, and knows how to trust her talented cast’s inherent charms to enliven the scenes. She’ll hold on a smile, let the bass rattle in the music (a well-curated playlist of decent originals and oldies), and let the chemistry brew. The result is invested in the relationships and plot developments, but has the patience to let them breathe a little. It understands the charm of letting Johnson and Ross sing along to “No Scrubs” while flying down a sunny L.A. street in a convertible, and the satisfaction felt when the characters find exactly what they need.

Shadier: FIFTY SHADES DARKER

The ending of Fifty Shades of Grey really made the picture. Before a finale in which meek Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) firmly turns down the imposing and domineering Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), the movie had been a modestly enjoyable adult drama, a sort of half-sexy, half-preposterous interlude between pretty young people engaging in teasingly revealed sexual exploration between bouts of bland business speak and low-boil rom-com flirting. Ah, but in its final moments it turned what had been a lopsided power dynamic – rich sadist gets off hurting a sweet underling who likes it, but only up to a point – into a loaded denial. He pleads with her to stay. She, having finally realized he liked hurting her more than she liked it and more than her willingness to play along could withstand, says a firm, simple, strong, “No.” It’s the last thing we hear as the elevator doors close on the final cut to black. Because Johnson had been such a fun performer, equally enthusiastic and full of personality in bedroom scenes and barroom conversations alike, she almost single-handedly kept the movie from tipping over into prurient giggling or exploitative leering, especially with Dornan’s dour wooden display at her side. This final assertion of her control over the situation lent the movie a nice, contained little arc the sequels were bound to trample.

As Fifty Shades Darker begins, Anastasia continues to rebuff Christian’s creepily insistent attempts to get his way back into her life. Alas, as following the dictates of the garbage book that inspired this whole thing demands, she must allow this to happen. If the first film was ultimately about a young woman trying out a relationship with a cold, distant, persnickety man just to see if she could make it work, the second is about that same woman getting pulled back into the relationship just because. If these stories are theoretically about true love, and I suspect that’s the ending we’re angling towards in next year’s supposed finale, it has done a poor job showing it. This installment, directed by James Foley (both a long way, and somehow not, from his better, similarly icy-toned, attractively cast and photographed 90’s thrillers Fear and After Dark, My Sweet), finds the couple trying out a new dynamic, with fewer rules and diminished expectations. She gets a new job. He buys the company. She meets his family. He takes her sailing. Playing out with smooth adult contemporary ballads under the glossy catalogue spread looking montages – people standing around in sweaters, on boats, at masquerade balls, and beside fireplaces – it tries to gin up interest with some workplace drama and Dark Secrets From The Past. At least it allows for the introduction of Kim Basinger, a welcome sight in an all-too-tiny role.

What little attention paid to the central relationship takes their chemistry and compatibility for granted. Even the sex scenes, the most memorable a fully-clothed shower make out session, aren’t as entertaining as the first’s, more actors’ contract negotiation than character development. (That’s really saying something when the original had literal contract negotiation built into the plot mechanics.) It’s like everyone involved suspects this couple’s long-term happiness won’t, or shouldn’t, work out, but are obligated to stand by them and see it through. (I’m sure many of us have been to weddings like that.) Even when we learn Christian is not just a dominant lover, but also a bit of a burgeoning cult leader – an ex (Bella Heathcote) still falls submissive before his meekest gestures, like she’s still under his spell – the weird sense of inevitable True Love pulls at the main couple. But why would the movie insist watching the funny, bookish, charming young woman continue to be drawn back into the world of this clearly unwell, closed-off, stone-faced billionaire is a route to a happy ending? It tries to be both a romance and a modern Gothic mystery (the question simmering underneath: what’s the deep darkness at the heart of family Grey?), but the latter continually turns the former far more sinister than intended.

And yet, why, then, does the movie give off the dull, consistent feeling of moderate surface pleasure? Perhaps it is because Johnson’s tremulous, dancing, sparkling line readings pirouette off the clunky dialogue (scripted by author E.L. James’ husband) and Foley’s use of competent cold grey photography is seductive Hollywood sheen. And even when I was baffled by the plot’s direction – and by how little actually happens – I was tickled enough by the splashes of melodrama – a drink thrown in a woman’s face at a fancy party! improbable publishing office politics! a random helicopter accident thrown in to gin up false suspense before the movie’s narrative totally flatlines! – to get carried along in its dumb gloss. It’s an empty-headed diversion, as silky a nothing as the original Zayn/Taylor Swift duet that twice slickly slides in one ear and out the other on the soundtrack. These are hardly the best reasons to recommend a movie. And, sure, it’s the sort of faux-transgressive that, say, The Handmaiden’s silver bells would make blush. But I was moderately entertained by this low-key mind-numbing polish.

Clash on a Hot Italian Roof: A BIGGER SPLASH

A Bigger Splash is a sensual melodrama with sun-baked Italian noir intentions that don’t fully reveal themselves until late in the film. Until then it spends a good long time watching its characters behave, collecting them in a contained space and tracking their interactions, subtle shifts in demeanor, taking and giving offense, drawn to and repulsed by each other. There’s an androgynous rock goddess (Tilda Swinton) recovering from vocal chord surgery staying at an isolated villa on a small Italian island with her handsome documentarian boyfriend (Matthias Schoenaerts). They’re comfortable and quiet, enjoying reading and sunning, mostly nude. So it’s a rude awakening to change their routine – and cover up a bit – when they have unexpected guests in the form of the rocker’s ex, a preening music producer (Ralph Fiennes) and his 22-year-old daughter (Dakota Johnson), who he only recently learned existed. They come to overshadow their vacation, quite literally blotting out the sun with their arrival as their descending plane casts its silhouette on a sunny beach.

Director Luca Guadagnino, whose 2009 feature I Am Love was an even more sumptuous melodrama starring Swinton, sets about creating a lush European character piece under which can simmer an undercurrent of eroticism and danger. The four people cooped up in an island getaway have intertwining pasts – it was Fiennes who first introduced Schoenaerts to Swinton, a couple who have now been together for many years, weathering storms that weigh with slowly revealed heaviness upon their relationship – and yet often try to act like they don’t. On one level it’s a movie about languorous rock and rollers at rest, stretching out poolside, cooking wonderful meals, reading interesting literature, spinning great records. They engage in passionate behavior, dancing, swimming, and eating amongst skin, sun, lapping waves, and fragrant fauna. What’s better than a late night karaoke session at a local street festival or an impromptu dance party? And yet what are these people really up to? It’s not always clear. There’s a lot of tension here, sexual – they’re four beautiful people in close quarters, after all – and otherwise.

It’s a movie about looking, we at them and they at each other. David Kajganich’s screenplay, based on a 1969 Alain Delon film called La Piscine, offers plenty of excuses to bring characters together, trapping them in encounters tracing shifts and jabs in relationships, often communicated nonverbally in a glance held in a shot/reverse shot, or a showy camera swivel, or a reflection off a pair of glasses. Guadagnino deploys splendid Yorick Le Saux camerawork in ways that show off its fluid dexterity, pushing in and swinging around, or cut into in quick flashes of distemper. It’s a movie that rests on its characters making eyes at one another – lovers expressing empathy or disgust, a preening braggart making it all about him, or a quiet girl sitting alone at a remove, testing the waters without making the content of her thoughts clear. It tracks silent transmissions of charged implications, tracing fault lines to an inevitable crack-up. The danger of something bad happening is always present, though its exact cause or source is kept tingling just out of reach. Deft flashbacks help reveal tangled emotions long past, which help contextualize the confusion of the present.

Four terrific performances animate what could easily be a frustratingly vague haze. Because the actors are comfortably rooted in their characters’ skins – the better to pull off an easy, breezy, equal-opportunity nudity from all involved at one point or another – it’s worth investing in their circumstances and puzzling out their motivations. Fiennes takes center stage as a man who can’t stop talking, pick pick picking at characters’ insecurities in ways that are equally unaware and yet too targeted to be totally dismissed as accident. This is in contrast to Swinton, whose recovering rocker is under medical orders to remain silent, her only dialogue spoken sparingly in a pained whisper. Schoenaerts has a solid masculine sensitivity about him, clearly in love, a doting caretaker totally annoyed by their unexpected guests, and yet retains corners of mystery about his emotional place. Lastly, Johnson is what? She’s totally unknowable up to the end, at once powerless and holding all the cards, an open book and a continually unfolding mystery. Is she a schemer or merely aloof, a seductress or a guileless id? As we learn just what these characters mean and mean to each other, the conflict at a low-boil is clearly ready to boil over.

When it reaches its deliriously unsettled conclusion, the tantalizing surface composure works to make it very cold, rejecting conventional satisfying conclusions or answers. What could be over-the-top is instead underplayed with dark comedy and cold laughs. (Listen to what a police chief barks over the phone about the morgue freezer and tell me it’s not going for deliberate gallows humor.) It is a bit deflating to turn such a hothouse of melodrama into a bitterly ironic noir in its final moments. But Guadagnino plays by the rules he set up, brining the characters in inevitable conflict and springing surprising developments with a certain merciless logic. Sure, it would be nice to cavort in the sun with gorgeous half-undressed people, but the fun has to end sometime, and in this case the real world encroaches through petty jealousies and sharp pangs of regret. What’s the worth of a passionate Dionysian lifestyle if it’s so fragile people who know just the right exploitable cracks in the façade can bring it to the brink of ruin?

Bad Fellas: BLACK MASS

Black Mass is a true crime gangster picture that doesn’t have a perspective or opinion on the events it recounts. It is content to grimly reenact backroom power plays and violent hits without caring too much about what it meant to the people involved, let alone using the proceedings as windows into their psyches. Set in Boston during the reign of crime kingpin James “Whitey” Bulger, a man who muscled out the Italian mob to become the city’s main source of organized crime, the screenplay makes clear the ties of neighborhood loyalty. This allowed Bulger to enter a mutually beneficial relationship with an FBI agent who once was a schoolyard chum, feeding information about his rivals while receiving a blind eye to his own criminal enterprises. This, along with a senator for a brother, allowed him to remain untouched for decades.

Director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) and screenwriters Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth (Get on Up) start in 1975 and work their way to 1995, following Bulger from humble nastiness to king of crime before it all unravels for him. Perhaps assuming the target audience has seen some gangster stories play out before, the film is not particularly interested in the how or what of its characters’ schemes, and is never clear about the nature of his income. Instead, it features tight close-ups and slow zooms highlighting small shifts in negotiations and power plays. The recurring moments are either intimately creepy – Bulger staring down another person with intimidating intensity until they give him what he wants – or violent, with killings telegraphed beyond the point of surprise arriving with nonetheless brutal force. What are we to make of these murders? Only that they’re senseless, I suppose.

A large ensemble of reliable talents slurring through a variety of phony Boston accents keep things watchable and reasonably interesting on a moment by moment basis. Joel Edgerton is a slimy FBI agent too close to Bulger, protecting him from his law enforcement colleagues (Kevin Bacon, David Harbour, Adam Scott, Corey Stoll) and their suspicions they’re not getting appropriately valuable intel for all the damage caused. Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, and W. Earl Brown are Whitey’s flunkies, who do a lot of the beating and killing, and drop in and out of the narrative. Benedict Cumberbatch is Bulger’s brother, affectionate but precious about keeping his office out of crime. And in this masculine environment of jockeying for power and speaking in deep whispers, a trio of female roles (for Dakota Johnson, Julianne Nicholson, and Juno Temple) exists to provide people who think this whole thing is dangerous but have no way of stopping it.

The proceedings are the sort of surface seriousness that coasts on the appearance of heavy subject matter without actually engaging with the thematic content that could exist under the surface. Cooper’s too interested in directing the logistics of the large ensemble, making sure everyone’s posing in the correct period detail and mushing their Rs into appropriate vaguely Bostonian sounds. The potentially fascinating story of corruption and crime is told through solid craft, Masanobu Takayanagi’s cinematography finely textured, David Rosenbaum’s editing steadily accumulating mild dread at the story’s most dramatic moments of threat. But there’s never a sense of what all the blood and backstabbing really means for the people involved beyond the simple facts of the case, and no foothold for either a formless “that’s life” truthiness or rigorous moralizing. It goes straight up the middle, ending up nowhere.

The mystery at the center remains the man himself, a presence and an instigator throughout the narrative who somehow remains stubbornly out of focus. How did he first rise to power? What made him the top Irish mobster? What did he think about what he did? We don’t know from this film. Here he seems to emerge fully formed from the shadows. Played by Johnny Depp at his least communicative and yet somehow as, if not more, affected than his Mortdecai or Mad Hatter, his countenance is entombed in artifice. Dead ice blue eyes pop against sickly pale skin, his face remolded out of makeup effects into something that’s always off-putting and unnatural. His Bulger is spooky, moving stiffly, holding his posture rigid, always frowning. He lurks in dark corners, most creepy when he stands hidden in an empty church nook, or when he interrupts a woman reading The Exorcist to calmly, threateningly run his hand along her face and neck.

Presenting the facts in a style synthesized and hollowed out from an amalgamation of every gangster picture that came before is one thing. But to plunk a performance like Depp’s in the middle of it – so artificial, so designed, so immediately signaling evil – is strange. It’s an interesting approach, more Karloff than DeNiro, more Michael Myers than Brando. He doesn’t seem like a real person. He looks like he should’ve been featured in Famous Monsters of Filmland fifty years ago. It makes impossible the notion we should take this seriously as a look into the face of real evil that men do. Besides, the movie’s too unfocused to even activate the Nosferatu qualities of Depp’s work. It’s a case of a project with a script, a director, and a lead performance working at cross purposes. It’s too shallow to be a weighty exploration of crime and punishment, too restrained to be pulpy fun, and too unwilling to follow an eccentric lead into a more overtly nightmarish direction. It’s competent enough to work scene by scene, but adds up to a missed opportunity all around.

Tied Up: FIFTY SHADES OF GREY

Another in a long cinematic tradition of excavating an intriguing movie out of a trash novel, director Sam Taylor-Johnson (of the young John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy) and screenwriter Kelly Marcel (of Saving Mr. Banks) treat E.L. James’ bestselling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey seriously as a picture of a problematic relationship between two very different people. It’s a strange, half-convincing film, part movie romance formula, and part psychological melodrama, shot like a thriller but with a cautiously sad core. It appears to head down troubling paths before pulling up short in a sudden conclusion. It’s a girl meets boy, girl tries out boy’s demands, girl’s not so sure she wants to stay story.

A young woman (Dakota Johnson) meets a rich young billionaire bachelor (Jamie Dornan) whose intensity attracts her. He likes her too, aggressively wooing her with expensive gifts, like first edition Thomas Hardy novels. She’s flattered, and allows her curiosity to pull her into his version of a relationship. They’re a study in opposites, she shy and giggly, and he self-serious and creepily controlled in all aspects of his life. She’s a romantic, and prone to drink a little and turn into a Broad City supporting character. He’s a movie workaholic, talking about “business” and standing around handsomely austere skyscraper conference rooms without ever getting into what, exactly, he does. All we know is she’s an English major without a job, and he’s a man who can afford to get his way.

He’s a dominant personality looking for someone to submit to his every whim. He wants to control her. This goes beyond the kinks that have made the story a sight-unseen source of derision and tittering (whips, handcuffs, and the like). She gets a thrill out of having her hands tied to the bedpost. But as their arrangement intensifies, bedroom negotiations soon involve an absurdly detailed and lengthy proposed contract. He’s clearly put in a lot of time thinking about his preferred partner’s activities. She says she’ll think about it, a totally reasonable reaction to his desire to determine her schedule, her diet, where she goes, who she sees.

To the movie’s credit, his increasingly controlling stalkerish behavior – appearing places unannounced, or taking over her life by, say, trading in her car for a new one without permission – isn’t soft-pedaled as twisted romance. A clear line is drawn between sex (even adventurous kinds) and exploitation. The problem isn’t the billionaire’s kinks, but the intensity with which he demands punishment and obedience, and how unwilling he is to pay attention to the needs of his partner. It’s all about his pleasure, his desires. This uncompromising can scare her, and yet she draws pleasure from their encounters, discovering that physical submission doesn’t need to include emotional compromise.

I never quite understood what they saw in each other. It doesn’t work as romance. He sees someone inexperienced and naïve, able to be molded into the partner he wants. She sees a handsome rich guy. What’s love got to do with it? There’s a tricky arc to be played here, a relationship that starts kinked and grows ominous. Johnson’s winning, vulnerable and charming, giving a real movie star performance. (Could we expect less from the daughter of Melanie Griffith and granddaughter of Tippi Hedren?) She bites her lips and rolls her eyes, able to make fun of her new boyfriend’s oddities, having fun with them, and then getting a little scared of how far he’ll go. She’s so good, floating through with intelligence and good humor, she even carries Dornan’s wooden sulky performance that’s mostly glowering and standing upright. (The supporting cast includes small roles for Marcia Gay Harden and Jennifer Ehle, so it’s not hurting for strong women.)

The leads draw clear differences between their characters, as opposites attract. We get several sex scenes that play dirtier in implication than in practice. They’re soft montages with lots of movement and skin but little lingering reveals. Two are set to Beyoncé songs, so you know they're smooth. The film saves the power plays for their negotiations, as she tries to get a “normal” boyfriend and accuses him of just wanting her as a sex slave. Their relationship is presented ambiguously enough, I wasn’t sure what we were rooting for. Do we want a Beauty and the Beast change on his part to loosen his rigid rules, or for her to leave him for someone more playful? I knew I wanted her to leave. He’s a gender-swapped Fatal Attraction waiting to happen. In its way, the movie’s an extreme metaphor for the difficulties couples face trying to compromise.

The movie should be looser and funnier, overheated in passion and problems. Imagine what a Pedro Almodovar approach could’ve ripened it into! Instead, it’s serious and slow, with long stretches of boredom between moments where Johnson’s allowed to leap to life with a twinkle in her eyes. Surprisingly little happens in the middle stretch as she decides whether or not to agree to his terms and submit to his will in all things. It allows ugly implications to creep in around the edges. But there’s a nice mix of giggling curiosity (“You’re so bossy,” she laughs mid spanking) and tentative caution, wondering just how much pleasure he derives from hurting her. She’s smart, refusing to get steamrolled by his uptight dominance, but curious to experiment a little first.

Taylor-Johnson, with cinematography by Seamus McGarvey, films it all in grey steel tones, making a film cool to the touch. It moves like a thriller, weighing its protagonist’s options seriously while keeping her partner’s motivations frustrating and frighteningly mysterious. I was pleasantly surprised to find a film focused on communication and consent, policing boundaries, and ending on what seems to me a triumphant “no means no.” Perhaps it’s a cliffhanger resolved in proposed sequels, but viewed as a single story unto itself, it’s a break for freedom, where a woman leaves a damaged man behind and goes forth into the world with the skills to have a mutually fulfilling relationship on her terms in the future. I’m not familiar with the source material, but somehow I think the filmmakers got the best possible movie out of it.