A LIGHTER SHADE OF GREY
No nudity for 30 minutes... and when the sex does come it’s toned down – Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation of E L James’s bonkbuster is polite and accomplished but, pur-lease, spare us a sequel
Ihad to travel all the way to Berlin for a preview screening of Fifty Shades Of Grey and it was there, in the city of Weimar-era decadence and Cabaretstyle naughtiness, that I discovered three things. First, that Anastasia Steele, the innocent young Vancouver student who falls for the fatally charismatic billionaire Christian Grey, no longer says ‘Holy crap’ or ‘Holy cow’ as she so tiresomely seemed to every second page in E L James’s raunchy bestseller. This is a definite improvement, although she does still provocatively bite her lip. A lot.
Second, that there is surprisingly little sex in this otherwise fairly faithful adaptation of a book that has sold more than 100 million copies, largely on the back of its explicit scenes of deflowering, instruction and so-called BDSM (bondage, discipline, sado-masochism) sex. On screen we wait the best part of half an hour for anyone to get their kit off at all, although we do get to see Anastasia sucking suggestively on a pencil bearing the name ‘Grey’. It gets a laugh.
This sex shortage is definitely unexpected, and the conventional, modesty-preserving shooting of what scenes there are is likely to be something of a disappointment, particularly for men dragged along by wives and girlfriends, but also perhaps for some of the women who make up the book’s predominantly female fan base. The notorious tampon scene, for instance, is conspicuous only by its absence in a film which, far from breaking new boundaries, is actually heavy with the whiff of what James would dismiss as the ‘vanilla’. This is a film that has been made to be seen rather than shock.
But the third and final thing I discovered is that, shortage of exotic shenanigans apart, artist-turned-director Sam Taylor-Johnson has delivered a decently acted and technically well-made adaptation of what remains a fundamentally silly and, at times, simply rather unpleasant story. Perhaps to stop us noticing this too soon, Taylor-Johnson, who made the John Lennon biopic
Nowhere Boy, employs music particularly effectively – think Annie Lennox singing I Put A Spell On You, Ellie Goulding’s Love Me Like You Do and, perhaps inevitably, Beyoncé’s Crazy In Love and you get the general hot-under-the-collar idea.
The overall effect is likely to be divisive: if you liked the book – and tens of millions of women seemed to – this is not just the faithful film of that book but also a film made by women for women. If it lacks the sort of sexual content that would have turned it either into hard- core pornography or a 21st-century version of Emmanuelle, it’s because Taylor-Johnson, screenplay writer Kelly Marcel and James herself, who has had a hands-on role as one of the film’s producers, decided that it should. Only the box office will be able to prove them wrong.
If you haven’t read the book, however, I can’t see the film version doing much for you, particularly once the giggles of the first half hour – ‘Okay, rope, tape, cable-ties... you’re the perfect serial killer’ – make way for the tedium of the endless contract negotiations between Grey’s ‘dominant’ and the ‘submissive’ role he wants Anastasia to adopt. As a voiceover launched into the complex terms of that contract, I have never seen more people in a cinema audience suddenly decide it was time to go to the loo. You could tell they’d read the book.
Dakota Johnson, the 25-year-old daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, really isn’t bad at all as Anastasia. More girl-nextdoor pretty than Hollywood beautiful, blessed with a neat real body rather than a Hollywood fantasy one, and certainly helped by Marcel’s fine-tuning of Anastasia’s character, she brings a low-key naturalness to a role that almost redefines the word ‘challenging’.
One minute Anastasia is in a smart dress, graduating from college; the next she’s starknaked, handcuffed to a metal frame and being
‘Decently acted, technically well-made adaptation of a fundamentally silly and, at times, unpleasant story’
whipped with a riding crop. In other directorial hands – male hands, for instance – this could easily have been exploitative, but you can see that Taylor-Johnson has looked after Johnson, both on-set and in the editing suite. Young actresses have suffered far greater indignities for their art than Johnson fairly modestly endures here.
Co. Down man Jamie Dornan has a tougher time as Grey, not least because he’s playing such a preposterous figure – the billionaire businessman, philanthropist, helicopter and glider pilot and concert-level pianist who dances like a dream and is a fully fledged sexual deviant, of course. There really is no end to either his talents or his implausibilities and there’s little Marcel’s writing talents can do about that.
Shorn of the beard he wore for The Fall on TV (he played the sexually motivated serial killer so 50 Shades definitely makes it two creeps in a row), Dornan looks like a younger Colin Firth but doesn’t yet have his screen charisma. But then he is playing a damaged control-freak (‘I’m 50 shades of f *****-up’) who is seeking to embark on an abusive relationship with a younger and less experienced woman, so it’s hardly Dornan’s fault that we end up not liking Grey. Not least, of course, because Anastasia is heading the same way.
Films about sado-masochism are always difficult – Secretary from 2002 was a decidedly awkward watch, and let’s not even mention Madonna in Guy Ritchie’s much-vilified Swept
Away – but, given the problems presented by the original material, Taylor-Johnson can walk away with her head high, knowing she has done a decent, competent job, if not necessarily a great one. That said, and despite two more 50 Shades novels being already published, I do hope no one mentions sequels…
This is not just the faithful film of the book but a film made by women for women