1:41:20 GG nudes

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is this movie contain proper sex

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This was very intriguing in most of the first hour of the film. Maggie Gyllenhall's character "Lee Holloway" almost riveted me to the screen, but the film bogs down after that hour and disintegrates into a sleazy soap opera. I have to laugh (or shake my head in disgust) at the "testimony" on the back on the DVD by Los Angeles Times reviewer Manohla Dargis who says this is "a gently bent old-fashioned romance." Yeah, right....as old-fashioned as Paris Hilton or Quentin Tarantino. Puh-leeze, how sleazy and out-of-touch are these newspaper movie critics? I have no trouble with Gyllenhaal, who is fascinating, and James Spader who, for once, wasn't some ultra-snotty, profane and smug idiot he usually plays. However, he was still a sick SOB in this portrayal as lawyer "E. Edward Gray," a guy similarly mentally ill as "Lee." Yes, those two made for a good couple, but "old-fashioned romance" is a laughable description of this sado-masochistic relationship. I enjoyed the acting and the photography, and Maggie's sweet, innocent (for the most part) looks, the but story was a little too sick, didn't have enough of the dark humor I was expecting (only a few laughs) and the characters are just too dysfunctional for my tastes. If you like "kinky" stuff and don't mind a slow story, you'll like this film. Otherwise, stay away.

Maggie Gyllenhaal deserves an Oscar nomination for her brilliant portrayal of borderline psychotic, self-mutilating Lee Holloway, a former mental institution patient seeking to sustain herself - vocationally and emotionally - in a challenging world where she has few safe harbors. She comes from a messy family background although that alone can't explain her illness. Learning typing, she gets a secretary's job with lawyer E. Edward Grey (James Spader, who also turns in a first-rate, nuanced performance). Grey refuses to have any computers in his very smart, expensive law office. Like many lawyers he's a perfectionist who abhors typographical errors but his obsession with perfection reflects more than an anal personality hitched to a law degree. His solo practice seems to thrive better than his self-control of a suppressed sexuality, awakened by Maggie at first unknowingly. This is a film about what many consider to be deviant behavior (sado-masochism and bondage-discipline, not your usual Hollywood romantic fun and games) that most will concur is uncommon in the workplace. Director Steven Shainberg and his cast - and Gyllenhaal and Spader carry the film, forget the supporting actors - show Lee and Grey's rocky and developing relationship with candor, without condemnation and without exploitation. The lawyer and his secretary are sexualized in a way few have experienced and those who have don't talk to folks outside their circle. This is a black comedy/a black drama. It either grabs or repels the viewer: there's no in-between. The resolution? Is it realistic or a cop-out? I'd love to hear from those able to comment from experience on IMDb's discussion board. But I have a feeling few will post reactions. A very different film that I rate 8/10 on a personal scale where I value the deep and tortured acting projecting the absorbing conflict of this sexualized working (initially) relationship.

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