In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Nude Scene, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, Maggie Gyllenhaal follows her brother into stardom via a very different path in 2002's Secretary!
Seeing as how she's three years older than her brother Jake, it's not totally surprising that Maggie Gyllenhaal had a more robust filmography prior to his big breakout with 2001's Donnie Darko. Like her little bro, Maggie had been working steadilythroughout the 90s, but 2002's Secretary was her tenth film ina robustfour year stretchas well as her first co-lead. The film finds her starring opposite James Spader, who had more or less cemented himself as one of the only major actors who wouldappearin sexually explicit films based around taboo subject matter.
Director Steven Shainberg was far from a new director, but he hadn't helmed a feature in six years—the poorly received 1996 flickHit Me being his last effort. A collaboration with screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson on this film proved to be career revitalizing, however, leading both to their next film 2006's Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. Wilson would also go on to script 2010's Chloe for Atom Egoyan and 2016's The Girl on the Train. Itmainlyseems in retrospect like a great convergence of an actress, writer, and director all on their way up, but the actress would rise highest of them all.
In the film, Gyllenhaal plays Lee, a woman just out of a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide. She's perhaps the most dysfunctional member of a highly dysfunctional family, but her intelligence and obedience attract her to theeccentric attorney E. Edward Grey (Spader), who brings her on as his new assistant. Lee allows herself to be the submissive in a BDSM relationship with her boss, finding that it brings her a new level of sexual satisfaction she'd never before attained. Grey, being full of self-loathing, begins to push Lee away because he develops genuine feelings for her and his shame over his sexual proclivities cause him to push her away.
Hmmmm... wealthy and powerful man named Grey with strong BDSM urges finds himself attracted to an otherwise normal "plain Jane" type girl? I wonder if they ever pursued litigation, they'd have a pretty good case I imagine. Anyway, much like that other BDSM Grey pop culture phenomenon thing, this ends with Lee deciding that she doesn't want a normal life with a normal dude—played by the stunningly normal Jeremy Davies—and she returns to Grey. Grey seems to take her back at first, but then commands her to sit and wait for him, not moving a muscle until he returns.
This means that she not only wets herself, but also rejects the family members who come to convince her to come back to her "normal" life with them. Grey watches all of this happen, which only makes him want Lee more, so when the family has finally gone, he takes her in his arms and tenderly brings her upstairs to bathe her and treat her like a princess...
It's twisted but they get their happy ending. They've found their perfect compliment, she wanting someone to run her life and he wanting someone to unquestioningly follow his directions.Ina 2018 interview with Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air, Maggietalked a lot about her role on HBO'sThe Deuce, but she also spoke about how it related to her role inSecretary. When asked by Gross if she had considered the sexually explicit early role as a forebear for her work on the HBO series, Gyllenhaal said she hadn't considered it...
"That's interesting. I mean,Secretarywas the first time that I was given a role where I could express something about myself, which, of course - you know, it has nothing to do with SM. It has nothing to do with spanking. And, you know, that's the fiction, right? The idea, I think, or the things that excite me the most about the roles - you know, roles that come into my life - are, like, is there something in this script, in this story that will allow me to explore something that's on the kind of the edge of what I know about myself but with the protection of fiction?
And soSecretarywas the first time I ever got to do that. I never could have articulated that that's what I wanted at the time. I just was like, oh, there's something in here that's for me. And it was kind of an amazing experience because the director was interested in me as an artist, was interested in what I was offering and the way that that shifted the story as opposed to, you know, whatever he'd imagined before I got there."
Many ofGyllenhaal's best performances that followed in films like Strip Search,Sherrybaby, Crazy Heart, and especially The Deuce have found her walking a fine line between submissive and dominant sexuality.Her characters are effective mostoften when they wield sex as a weapon while simultaneously demonstrating a ton of vulnerability. That mix sets her apart from many of her contemporaries and she got there way before little bro Jake did when he combined those same qualities to become the crush of every woman and gay man in Brokeback Mountain. Maggie Gyllenhaal is a special and unique actress, always willing to take big risks, even inHollywood blockbusters.
Catch up withour most recent editions ofAnatomy of a Nude Scene
—Demi Moore Took a Record Paycheck to Headline Striptease
—That Time We All Fell in Love with Kelly Preston inMischief
—What Happened with Marisa Tomei's Nude Scene fromUntamed Heart
—Cybill Shepherd is Uncomfortably Relatable inThe Last Picture Show
—Penelope Cruz Does Very Different Nude Scenes Playing the Same Role inOpen Your EyesandVanilla Sky
—Joyce Hyser Becomes an 80s Icon inJust One of the Guys
—Charlize Theron Lands on the Map with2 Days in the Valley
—SirensMay be Plural, But All Eyes Were on Elle MacPherson
—Eva Green's Star is Born in Bertolucci'sThe Dreamers
—Phoebe Cates Takes a Dip and Becomes a Legend inFast Times at Ridgemont High
—Kim Basinger Gets All Wet for Mickey Rourke in9½ Weeks
—Molly Ringwald Does Her Only Topless Scene inMalicious
—Straw DogsRaises That Pesky Issue of Consent
—No Amount of Plausible Deniability Can Excuse What's Going On inCaligula
—The Devil's AdvocateFills Our Eyes with Double Vision
**Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy**
