If Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” is a feminist dystopian fairytale, then Fifty

Shades of Grey is a feminist’s whimsical nightmare. Women came to this screening in droves—cutthroat about finding seats. These same women who most likely enjoyed the book for its titillating sex scenes probably left disappointed. The sex scenes themselves were very tasteful, aka vanilla. So much so that France gave the film a 12 and over rating, calling the film a “romance.”

The film opens like every rom-com about a young female journalist. Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is filling in for her roommate and fellow Washington State University Vancouver student Kate, to interview Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), a handsome young billionaire for the school paper. She stumbles into and through the interview babbling incoherently, forgetting to bring a pencil, and accidentally asking him if he’s gay. It’s all very charming—think Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed. What follows is Christian’s hell-bent quest to get Ana to sign a contract to be his Submissive in a BDSM relationship.

Before I talk about how much I enjoyed the film, I want to address the troubling idea of conflating obsession with romance. After their first meeting, Christian shows up at the Portland hardware store where Ana works, unannounced. When she drunk dials him in line for the bathroom at a bar, he presumably tracks her and comes to “save” her, taking her away from her friends. There’s a sharp glimmer of anger when he finds out that she is a virgin, almost shames her for it, and “rectifies the situation.” He throws a hissy fit when she doesn’t ask permission to go visit her mother in Georgia. When he treats her like dirt over text and she doesn’t reply, he calls and calls and eventually shows up to take her away. He sells her car without her knowledge and buys her a new one. These are all red flags of an unhealthy at best, but pretty clearly emotionally abusive relationship. Stalking, isolation and possessiveness does not equate to love. My heart hurts knowing that there are women out there who will read these actions as romantic, and that Christian Grey is the Prince Charming they think they deserve.

My biggest gripe with the film is the way the punishment scene following one of many arguments in which Ana wants something approaching a “normal” relationship and Christian reiterates his singular interest was handled. As he punishes her, the camera cuts from an unsuccessful stylized diagonal two shot, to Christian’s comical facial expressions, to close-ups of Ana whose discomfort is apparent. The way the shots are spliced together however, are sloppy, almost humorous, and desensitizes the viewer to her experience of pain and humiliation. The scene is not about her at all. And it should be. She becomes disassociated with the violence that is being done to her.

Christian tells Ana that being the Submissive is both liberating and powerful, and that it stops whenever she wants, and is seemingly all about consent. Ana does have her empowering moments, but it takes her saying no multiple times for him to listen. And he doesn’t really. He gives her some space, and then violates her wishes. Similarly, the film’s comedic tone, Dakota Johnson’s winningly naive performance, and Ana’s little bit of visible body hair are probably also devices to create a false sense of empowerment, made to lull our inner Strident Feminist.

That being said, the movie was fun. I loved the absurdity of it, and was maybe a little too lively for the rest of my cohort camped out in the press section of the packed theater. I remember wishing that like with porn and martial arts films, I could have had the luxury of watching it at home to fast forward to the good parts (sex and fight scenes in bamboo forests respectively). But as I mentioned earlier, there were no good sex scenes—and that’s what all the hype was about, right? The entire film was all campy exposition, a Lifetime movie on the big screen. The first sexual encounter in the “Red Room of Pain” (at minute 90) I would only consider hot because Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” remix pushed it just over the edge.

dle@seattleweekly.com

Fifty SHADES OF GREY Opens Fri., Feb. 13 at Sundance and other theaters. Rated R. 125 minutes.