Playing it safe handcuffs kink series’ finale
Fifty Shades Freed (out of 4) Starring Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan. Directed by James Foley. Opens Friday in GTA theatres. 105 minutes. 18A
Ah, the bonds of matrimony!
After a whirlwind courtship and two previous movies, Anastasia and Christian Grey of the Fifty Shades trilogy are tastefully wed — everything in this film is exceedingly tasteful — but the power dynamics in the relationship are shifting as Mrs. Grey demonstrates unexpected spunk.
“I need to have my own identity,” she insists.
Meanwhile, a menacing former boss (previously seen in Fifty Shades Darker) is escalating his campaign of revenge against both of them.
Oh, the travails of young love between two spectacularly gorgeous people — the kind of people who look fabulous even when they’ve just woken up — as they continue to explore that whole kinky BDSM thing.
There’s a ready audience for the Fifty Shades film series to be found among the readers of the wildly successful trilogy of books. They’re mostly women — as was the vast majority of the audience at the preview screening — and it’s all about the fantasy of love, the joy and the accompanying pain.
Director James Foley competently creates an idyllic playground for the newlyweds, a world of tailored suits, designer dresses, foreign holidays and very fast foreign cars.
There is not a speck of dirt to be found in the sumptuous surroundings or a mote of dust in the air. It is all rather too much.
Then there is the actual relationship between Ana and Christian, the back-and-forth exchanges that leave one with the impression that he isn’t all that dom and she isn’t all that sub.
That’s actually not so bad. It would be truly dreadful and frankly unwatchable if Anastasia was the cowed female and Christian was the overbearing jerk. (He’s still kind of a jerk.) Then there are the sex scenes, which is in theory a huge part of the appeal. But what worked as steamy, salty prose on the page does not translate to the screen.
That’s because of a strange anomaly that divides mainstream American cinema from that of other Western countries, which is: Graphic violence at its most explicit and creative is fair ball and freely available to impres- sionable young minds but DO NOT DARE to show anything as explicit as male or female genitalia. (Breasts don’t count.)
So the sex scenes are so kink-lite as to be laughable. Yes, there’s a “red room” filled with all sorts of alluring restraints, spanking devices and other marital aids but barely a demonstration of their actual use. Though it’s difficult to discern the flavour of ice cream used in one so-called erotic encounter, it’s probably vanilla.
Dakota Johnson is actually pretty decent and likeable in the role of Anastasia but Jamie Dornan just looks hurt and confused throughout. Could it be that being super-rich isn’t a guarantee of happiness, or is Dornan the actor secretly worried that no one will ever take him seriously again?
The script has sporadic dollops of humour, some of it even intentional. But the plot is silly, the sex is lame and the happy-ever-after conclusion is beyond hokey. Everyone involved in this dismal enterprise deserves a good . . . time out.