Best of all, Johnson and her director embrace Ana’s paradox: She snickers at Christian’s predilections, but they also turn her on.
With a loose-limbed naturalness, she conveys naiveté, intellectual curiosity and romantic yearning, and shows the unassuming Ana’s newfound thrill at being seen, however complicated the man holding her in his admiring gaze. Her facial features recall both her parents (Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson), but she’s very much her own actor. Although the character’s literary leanings are as flatly drawn as Grey’s vague philanthropic undertakings and high-powered tech-biz talk, Johnson is captivating. She’s embarking on postcollege life at the same time that she experiences a physical awakening that she never would have imagined. Throughout the film, his use of close-ups is fully attuned to the central performances.įirst seen looking in a mirror, Anastasia is a figure defined by self-discovery. They negotiate that document in a nighttime “business meeting,” with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey finding a stylized sensuality in the widescreen frame. Many of these fall to Dornan, who finds the icily deranged conviction in such morsels as “I’m not going to touch you until I have your written consent” and “Welcome to my world,” Grey’s pronouncement after receiving said consent and giving Ana her first spanking.Īs the attraction plays out, Ana is both doe-eyed and skeptical, challenging Grey on his philosophy as well as specific clauses of the contract that would officially make her his submissive. Banks, is ultra-faithful to James’ writing, and retains some of its most risible lines. The screenplay by Kelly Marcel, whose only previous feature credit is the utterly wholesome Saving Mr. When he takes Ana up in a magnificent glider, both characters let go, and the two leads wordlessly evince very different forms of unhinged joy, equally affecting. In his first major big-screen performance, Dornan creates a remarkable range within Grey’s tightly wound intensity. Things grow more compelling once Grey whips out his nondisclosure agreement - along with a nice Pouilly-Fumé, naturally - and shows Ana his “playroom,” expertly outfitted with state-of-the-art S&M gear.Įxcept for his prowess at pleasuring women, everything is slightly off in Grey, from the not-quite-swagger of entitlement to the not-quite-revealed memories of a wounded childhood.
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Even so, the movie is, by definition, a stronger proposition than the book because it strips away the oodles of cringe-inducing descriptions and internal monologue that tip the text heavily toward self-parody. It’s a slow build to the smutty bits, and one that’s disappointingly devoid of tension.
With a suddenness that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror thriller, he shows up in the aisles of the hardware store where she works and leaves her deeply flustered as she helps him with a shopping list of items - rope and cable ties among them - whose true purpose she’ll soon understand.īut not all that soon. But his performance quickly grows fascinating in its containment, revealing a disturbingly more animated side of Grey when he next encounters Ana.
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In that glass box, Dornan seems lacking as the stormy-eyed Grey, displaying little of the animal magnetism of the serial killer he plays on BBC series The Fall (indirectly referenced in an exchange of in-joke dialogue). Hearts and flowers are barely concealed beneath the pornographic surface, and as with most mainstream love stories, an infatuated but commitment-averse male is in need of rehabilitation.
Both on the page and in the glossy, compellingly acted screen adaptation, one of the more perverse aspects of their zeitgeist-harnessing story is the breathless way it melds the erotic kink known as BDSM with female wish-fulfillment fantasy of a decidedly retro slant. The long-fingered antihero of E L James’ 2011 novel is a sexual dominant, practiced and resolute, determined to make Anastasia Steele his submissive without giving her the dreaded “more” - i.e., the dinner-date trappings of conventional romance. As the tens of millions of readers of Fifty Shades of Grey know, Christian Grey doesn’t do hearts and flowers.