Secretary

Lions Gate Films | Release Date: September 20, 2002

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

63	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews

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Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

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Staff (Not Credited)

There's a word for an actress who can go from nervous to winsome to raunchy to romantic in a heartbeat and get you to adore her the whole time. The word is star. Read full review

David Edelstein

Most love stories are bland and generalized. This one takes you deep inside the dance. Read full review

Marjorie Baumgarten

Secretary is a testament to the importance of tonality in telling a story.

James Berardinelli

Has enough genuine laughs to eliminate the potential twitters and snickers, and it treats Edward and Lee as people. We end up caring about what happens to these two individuals, even as we smile and laugh at their antics. Read full review

William Arnold

Secretary is one of the best of a growing strain of daring films -- "Bliss," "The Lifestyle," "Satin Rouge" -- that argue that any sexual relationship that doesn't hurt anyone and works for its participants is a relationship that is worthy of our respect. Read full review

Joe Morgenstern

Lee's journey of the body and soul is something else. Maggie Gyllenhaal makes it strangely touching, a revelation.

Peter Travers

A film of startling humor and feeling. For that, director Steven Shainberg, who co-wrote the script with Erin Cressida Wilson, owes much to two remarkable performances. Read full review

David Ansen

Manages to be simultaneously subversive and sweet.

J. Hoberman

The unnecessarily emphatic ending suggests that Secretary's makers are a bit anxious to demonstrate they've whipped a potentially grotesque, spanks-for-the-memories scenario into the season's most romantic love story -- which is, in fact, what they've done. Read full review

Stephanie Zacharek

It's a liberating, kindhearted picture, one whose ending brings with it the feeling that something has finally been shaken free. How comfortable you feel with that is completely up to you. Read full review

Todd McCarthy

In a very demanding role demanding a vast emotional range from clueless innocent to confident role player and emotional adventurer, Gyllenhaal is outstanding. Read full review

Richard Leiby

Initially cold and perverse to its core, the film transmutes into something warm and uplifting. Normal, even. Read full review

Stephen Holden

A wholesome self-help fable about the unlocking of shame and its magical transformation into pleasure and personal liberation. Read full review

Manohla Dargis

For all the dolorous trim, Secretary is a genial romance that maintains a surprisingly buoyant tone throughout, notwithstanding some of the writers' sporadic dips into pop Freudianism. Read full review

Ted Shen

Wicked little black comedy. Read full review

Graham Robinson

Secretary's treatment of female sexuality is as matter-of-fact as its handling of self-mutilation, and the key to both is Gyllenhaal's remarkable performance. Read full review

Ty Burr

Love hurts in Secretary -- but not too much. It's not impossible to imagine adventurous young couples seeing this movie and rushing home to try out the handcuffs and paddles. Read full review

Roger Ebert

Approaches the tricky subject of sadomasochism with a stealthy tread, avoiding the dangers of making it either too offensive, or too funny. Read full review

Mike Clark

Even without the surprise of seeing Spader going for laughs and getting them, Secretary is just too original to be ignored. Read full review

Steven Rea

Pulls off a neat trick: It's a poignant, sweet-natured love story in which what most of us would call kinky sex - domination, submission, some enthusiastic spanking - is featured prominently, but not pruriently. Read full review

Megan Lehmann

Against all odds, director Steven Shainberg has managed to craft an oddly compassionate -- and often very funny -- tale of an emotionally symbiotic affair. Read full review

Jami Bernard

The daring, funny and quirkily erotic Secretary examines power exchanges between consenting adults in a way that other movies have not managed without turning off swaths of the squeamish. Read full review

Keith Phipps

There's something appealing about an unapologetic love story set in an office that's only a few clicks off from looking like a fetish dungeon, and Spader and Gyllenhaal make sure that the romance, kinks and all, carries the day. Read full review

Merle Bertrand

Secretary, like the type of relationship it explores, is not for everybody. But it does what good films do best; that is to provoke us, push our buttons, make us think and maybe even entertain us in the process. Read full review

Lawrence Toppman

Director Steven Shainberg and writer Erin Cressida Wilson argue that everyone deserves the love that makes them happiest, and that these two will remain miserable until they stumble upon each other. Read full review

Peter Rainer

Secretary is deeply conventional: Edward and Lee accept their bondage as the way to a more fulfilling life. It's the filmmakers who need to be spanked. Read full review

Shawn Levy

Director Steven Shainberg makes something draggy out of something that wants to be light. It's got wit, but it's also earnest, and in proportion to those two traits it wins and loses you.

David Sterritt

The movie works hard to be naughty, but its sub-David Lynch style doesn't quite click. Gyllenhaal is excellent and Spader effectively adds to his roster of creepy characters. Read full review

Rick Groen

The movie isn't painfully bad, something to be "fully experienced"; it's just tediously bad, something to be fully forgotten. Read full review

Clint Morris

A bizarre flick. It moves a little apprehensively between comedy, drama and then, erotic romance, with the central players' excellent performances (especially newcomer Gyllenhaal) suffering because of the film’s indecisions. Read full review

Michael Sragow

What's hilarious about the build-up is that Secretary proves to be the softest, most middle-of-the-road movie that could have been made about this subject. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineKen Fox

Before it takes a sudden turn and devolves into a bizarre sort of romantic comedy, Steven Shainberg's adaptation of Mary Gaitskill's harrowing short story about dominance, submission and the twisted sexual dynamics of the work place is a brilliantly played, deeply unsettling experience. Read full review

David Denby

Not meant to be realistic; it was shot by the director Steven Shainberg in a slow, dreamy neo-De Palma style and in candy colors, and Gyllenhaal has a Kewpie-doll silliness that almost makes the naughty parts of the movie fun. [23 Sept 2002, p. 98]

New Times (L.A.)Jean Oppenheimer

The problem with Secretary isn't that it is offensive or unnerving -- although you get the idea the filmmakers hoped it might be at least one of those. The problem is that the story is slow-moving and dull.

Michael Wilmington

Though I would agree it's original -- it's the first aboveground romance movie I've seen in which the heroine is repeatedly spanked, verbally tormented and tied to a chair by her lover--- it's not an experience I much enjoyed. Read full review

Richard Schickel

Writer-director Shainberg seems to be aiming for a dark comedy, but mostly his movie is coy without being funny, ugly without being truly transgressive, stupid when it needs to be smart. Read full review

Desson Thomson

In a movie as unrewarding as this, there's really only one burning question: When does the spanking begin? Read full review

Rene Rodriguez

The characters in Secretary never feel the least bit human. Their quirks, sexual and otherwise, are all on the surface. Inside, where it counts, nobody's home. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

It provokes nothing but yawns, and the sex it explores is stuff everybody knows about and says, "So what?" Read full review