This is a quality flick all the way around. It stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a young woman just released from a mental hospital where she was placed when her parents found out she routinely cuts herself. The other star is James Spader who plays the lawyer/boss of the film and he gets off on having total control over other people. It's a very dark romantic comedy, but ultimately incredibly sweet and original.
The only flick I can compare this to is Punch-Drunk Love. I never really thought I'd see another movie which fell into the same sort genre-bender that Punch-Drunk belongs to, but if there is one out there Secretary is it. Both feature a sweet love story based around incredibly flawed characters who end up finding the perfect person to compliment their outrageous abnormalities. Now, I suppose "flaw" is a poor choice of wording, as the point of the film is to show that the characters in fact aren't flawed, but just have a different way of living and viewing the world. It's a dfferent kind of love that they share; a different kind of relationship which makes them deeply happy.
In an effort to keep this short, I'll wrap this up by mentioning that Gyllenhaal is a fantastic young actress. Prior to this I had only seen her in a supporting role in Donnie Darko as Donnie's sister, and in a very small role in Adaptation. But just from those small performances I could tell she was one to watch and I once I found out about this flick I just had to check it out, and I'm happy to say my suspicions were absolutely correct. Check out this flick, but only if you're not too conservative. It gets kind of sexual/kinky at a number of points, and not in typical fashion.
8/10 Awesomes
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