This is a movie that'll make a voyeur out of you. You're about to witness a psychological case study that is entertaining and erotic. Got your attention? Hang on, because it doesn't get to the good stuff until the second act.

It's not that it's cynically being held back or, even, clinically for that matter. It's that timid Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) doesn't know what she is and by obtaining her first job she will eventually discover why she feels the need to cut the skin on her thigh and behave in other unaccountable self-abusing ways. She's no more aware of the causes of her repressed, shy, fixated actions than we are, and we wonder if it's because of her mother Joan's (Lesley Ann Warren) influence, a woman who waits 5 hours in a parking lot for her daughter to get off work so she can drive her home, a distance that's walkable. Distance from the norm seems to run in the family. But, no, Lee's abnormalities have got to derive from more than a mother's misplaced devotion.

It's her new boss, lawyer E. Edward Grey, who will bring her (and us) some answers. It's his obsessive-compulsive, male-dominant nature that will reveal to Lee that she's a submissive personality. It takes an employer who is prone to driving away wives and secretaries with quirky demands and beyond anal attention to detail to recognize that Lee is the flip side of his dominant/obsessive personality, and he's soon putting a stop to her self-destructive habits and enslaving her to his own abusive predilections.

The discovery starts one day after Grey goes into his usual tirade about Lee's typing errors, when he tells her to bend over her desk and read aloud the errant letter. While reading, he stands behind and whacks her in the glutes. Is this grounds for a good size law suit or what? Perhaps outside this particular office it would be but, here, the compulsive/dominant-submissive equation is about to be resolved. This bit of madness goes on long enough for Lee to realize that she not only likes it, but craves more of his kinky style of attention. And therein lies the story, the blooming of Lee's personality and purpose, and the sexual delights and satisfactions that are to come (pun intended-we're not above prurience when the movie provokes it).

One source of enjoyment for this exposure to a psychological corner of society stems from the talents of one interesting actress. Maggie Gyllenhaal, the real-life sister of the now famous Jake ("The Good Girl"), has been previously seen in "Riding in Cars with Boys", "Donnie Darko" and "Cecil B. DeMented". She's got a taste for the nutty, the off-color, the slip stream of quirk. She knows how to fascinate and amuse you all at once. She turns from homeliness to comeliness with the elevation of the camera, the darkening of a fill light, the sudden appearance of character confidence. This lady is as surprising as she is promising.

Which is not to say that James Spader is anything but in control of every manifestation of a personality that would seem to be seriously out of control. His is a law office that gives new meaning to the term, "violation", all the while etching out a new page in his portfolio of oddball characters and demonstrating his very considerable acting skills.

The fine cinematography is by Steven Fierberg.

As for the film, from a short story written by Mary Gaitskill, a script by Erin Cressida and directed by Steven Shainberg, it's as challenging a love story as we've ever seen. We got frontal nudity, folks. We got masturbation. We got intercourse. It got behavior so original and beyond any norm, no one's ever seen it. It'll amuse and titillate you, but it isn't for everybody, let alone many. It has an integrity to the kinkiness of its theme that doesn't shake loose. It's just the thing for the festival circuit, and young boys are going to freak. In short, it's one for the adventurous to see. But see it to its developmental end. And, you'll get more out of it if you bring your analyst along with you.

                                      ~~  Jules Brenner