FIFTY SHADES OF GREY will find an appreciative audience that’s quite happy to paddle in the shallow waters of this sexual escapade

Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle, Eloise Mumford, Marcia Gay Harden, Rita Ora

Running Time: 125 minutes 

Release: February 13th, 2015

When the news broke that director Sam Taylor-Johnson was to  helm the adaptation of E.L James‘ erotic novel FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, the expectations of a sexually titillating, fantasy fuelled, romantic romp crept into the minds of book fans and delighted movie-goers. Images of a dapper Mr. Grey filled the imaginations of the novels loyal fandom and when Jamie Dornan was cast as the dominant hunk, hearts burst as they rushed to book their theatre tickets. A similar story goes for the timid and endearing Anastasia Steele, with the casting of young Dakota Johnson quickly confirming FIFTY SHADES OF GREY as one of 2015 flicks to look forward to.

Promising to test the boundaries of sexual exploration and intense infatuation, FIFTY SHADES OF GREY tells the story of book smart student Anastasia and intense, millionaire bachelor Christian Grey. When the two meet, an instant attraction leads to a whirlwind romance that quickly intensifies and becomes a battle of wills when Grey introduced Anastasia to the world of Dominants and Submissive as well as his Red Room of Pain. Despite the high expectations and promises of a new level of romance, FIFTY SHADES OF GREY leaves audiences unsatisfied and hungry for more substance as this painfully mainstream movie falls limp on almost every level.  

Taylor-Johnson’s direction feels arrogant and lackluster, completely juxtaposing her previous work, including the beautiful NOWHERE BOY, which screamed visual artistry and directional commitment. Instead, within FIFTY SHADES, Taylor-Johnson relies on the gimmick of explicit sexual content as a narrative drive, leaving behind any real sense of coherent direction or complex thought process. A constant stream of close-up’s focusing on Anastasia’s pouting mouth, biting her lip or innocently ingesting the end of a Mr. Grey pencil quickly goes from mildly cringey to just unbearable lazy filmmaking. The scenes in which Taylor-Johnson attempts to create some kind of seemingly art-house imagery in its colour and mise-en-scene, fall flat with false force and leaves one feeling more within the red light district than expressive cinema. 

As for our two leading actors, they truly do the best with what they’ve been given. An abominable script gives them little to tackle with any sense of true emotive conviction. Lines like “I’m 50 shades of fucked up” and “If you were mine, you wouldn’t walk right for a week” fall out of Dornan’s mouth in an almost apologetic manner, as if even he doesn’t believe in the movie version of Mr. Grey. Johnson faces the same struggle as the innocent Anastasia timidly makes her way through the script, adapted by Kelly Marcel, who went from writing the heart-warming SAVING MR. BANKS to this laughable drivel. A sense of comedic parody rings from every line, leaving supposedly erotic dialogue feeling more like a moment in the SCARY MOVIE franchise. 

Dornan, a usually impressive dramatic actor, is given this intolerable character to attempt at making desirable. While his physical appearance lives up to Mr. Grey’s hype, the character itself is hideous, which can only be the fault of James’ original material. While the problems of consent and abuse have been made apparent in the run up to the films release, there is no such issue within the film itself. All sexual aspects to the film are fully consented, even within the final, more extreme sexual scene. However, Christian Grey is a completely unlikable character, whose general nature comes off as frighteningly obsessive and smothering, rather than the desired protective nature Dornan desperately attempts to portray. 

Johnson gives her very all at attempting to mix the right amount of vulnerability and charm for the young Anastasia Steele, but again is let down by the material she has to work with. Due to Grey’s nauseatingly controlling nature, the extreme difference in Johnson’s character feels utterly far-fetched, making it difficult for audiences to empathize with her, at the very least, one feels uneasy for her in the intense scenes where Grey begins to dictate her life and behaviour. Johnson attempts to convey the freedom that Steele supposedly feels now that Grey has let her have him, but it falls flat at feeling disastrously like false feminism and lands in the world of stereotypical gender roles.  

There’s no doubt that FIFTY SHADES OF GREY will find an appreciative audience that’s quite happy to paddle in the shallow waters of this sexual escapade; the film’s following sequels will hopefully learn from it’s first mistakes and make a movie worth of the exceptional hype that James’ novels bask in. Despite their worthy attempts, Dornan and Johnson are let down by both writer Marcel and Taylor-Johnson who perhaps forgot that they actually had to appeal to an audience that went beyond the books and needed to engage in more than a little light bondage to do so.

Verdict

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