Fifty Shades of Grey Blu-ray review

Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle, Eloise Mumford, Luke Grimes, Marcia Gay Harden, Victor Rasuk, Rita Ora, Max Martini, Andrew Airlie, Callum Keith Rennie

Certificate: 18

Run Time: 125 minutes

Synopsis: When an unworldly college student steps in for her sick roommate to interview a prominent businessman, she unexpectedly falls for the enigmatic interviewee whose sexual proclivities are more singularly focussed. 

I know why you’re reading this, so let’s cut to the chase shall we? To be honest, Jamie Dornan’s Christian Grey summarised it better than I ever could when he snarled on screen that he’s ‘Fifty shades of fucked up!’ Damn right Jamie – although I was thinking more along the lines of the film’s ‘Fifty shades of fucking boring’. Yeah, folks. It’s boring, underwhelming but not all doom and gloom and we’ll get to that later.

It also makes you wonder to what extent did the ‘logger-heading’ between Fifty Shades of Grey author E. L. James and the film’s entire entourage, everyone from the production house to screenwriter Kelly Marcel and director Sam Taylor-Johnson, affect certain scenes and the overall outcome. In fact, if you’re interested, pay close attention to the film’s dialogue as it’ll be glaringly obvious there’s two opposing writing styles effecting a discordant rhythm.

Both James and Taylor-Johnson have readily admitted to contentions on-set and particularly regarding the sex scenes. If truth be told, I’m curious to know who was responsible for those insipidly lackluster scenes because if that’s their idea of kink…I can’t imagine what their vanilla is like? Not to mention single-handedly pre-ejaculating all those semi-curious sexuals out of the luxuriously enticing Red Room and right back in to their vanilla playpens.

Despite saying all this, Taylor-Johnson’s caning scene just inside the entry of David Wasco’s super-luxurious Red Room is deliciously titillating and beautifully crafted. It epitomises the ethos that the submissive (even whilst naked and in the waiting position) controls the power – to wield and submit – within the dynamic of their BDSM relationship. Likewise, the suspended hanky-spanky scene with the riding crop is also nicely executed, though I wish artist Taylor-Johnson had gone one step further and used the film as an opportunity to introduce viewers to the intricate and beautiful art of Shibari.

Regardless of words like ‘abuse’ and ‘torture’ that have been bandied around in relation to Fifty Shades of Grey, I bet there’s not a consenting adult out there who wouldn’t be tempted to (or at least fantasised themselves) touch or experiment with some of the Red Room’s state-of-the-art equipment.

Taylor-Johnson’s sleek and elegant adaption of E. L. James’ ‘holy craptastic’ Harlequin-esque porn-oh-story Fifty Shades of Grey follows the sexual awakening of English-literature ingénue Anastasia ‘Ana’ Steele (Dakota Johnson). As a favour to her sick roommate Kate (played by Eloise Mumford), Ana agrees to cover an interview with billionaire entrepreneur and University benefactor Christian Grey for their college newspaper. On entering Grey’s austere office, Ana and Christian are immediately intrigued by the other: she, by his punctilious aloofness and he, by her unaffected innocence and youthful beauty. Ana wants romance and a loving relationship; Christian wants her… to fuck her, but only with a contract of course.

Intrigue soon turns to infatuation as Grey creates right-place-right-time encounters with Ana such as bumping into her at the hardware store where she works. The ensuing tête-à-tête cleverly crafted by Marcel, is humorously witty and playful as wide-eyed Ana helps Christian locate his cable ties, duct tape and lengths of rope. ‘You’re the complete serial killer,’ Ana finally quips to Christian; also an allusion to Dornan’s previous role as a stalking serial killer in BBC’s The Fall.

Following unannounced visits at Ana’s home, her work and her mother’s home in Florida, their mutual obsession culminates in Christian whisking Ana away for the weekend in his helicopter to his Seattle apartment. Ana’s anticipation of a ‘romantic’ weekend turns to intellectual curiosity when Christian reveals his singular proclivity before asking the sexually inexperienced Ana if she would agree contractually, to become his submissive followed closely by showing her his play room.

Johnson is magnetic as the quietly confident and not so naïve virgin who contemplates letting go of traditional conventions and exploring her sexuality. You can’t help but follow every fluid (and awkward) movement on screen and be entranced as she conveys every new experience and psyche layer so openly. Johnson also manages to embrace the absurdity of the text and her butt-plugging control freak by playing the player. The contract negotiation scene is particularly entertaining. On the other hand, Dornan the poor soul is a cardboard cutout up shit creek without a paddle. There’s nowhere he could go with his two-dimensional, all brawn / no brain character no matter how hard he tried to humanise the bodybot. And with Razzie worthy lines like ‘I fuck…hard’, ‘Me’ and ‘I’m fifty shades of fucked up’, I’m impressed Dornan managed to remain so stoic and not inadvertently introduce watersports to the BDSM table.

In a nutshell, Fifty Shades of Grey is an intricately carved chessboard in need of an experienced player, not an amateur. It’s well directed, decadently constructed, and exquisitely shot, not to mention built around a tantalising premise that explores an erotic practice very few people truly understand or practice, unhinging traditional norms and personal sexploration. Unfortunately, the script fails to capitalise on its golden opportunity to demystify and educate the masses about BDSM. And let’s not mention (again) that the inchoate script exposes the discord within the script writing department.

Perhaps they should have watched Disney’s Frozen beforehand. That way they would have known to let it go, let it go and preferably to a Bergman-esque art house in France, Sweden or Poland.

Fifty Shades of Grey is out now to own on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital Download.