Secretary: Critic Reviews

A picture with heart. You shouldn't leave feeling soiled or bruised. Just touched.

Despite its flaws, Secretary stays in your head and makes you question your own firmly held positions.

"Secretary" recalibrates the capabilities of meaningful romantic comedy - a "Pygmalion" variation that's stealthily tender, witty but never broad and scintillatingly erotic to the point of palpitations. Gyllenhaal and Spader give career-best work.

Steven Shainberg maintains a level of erotic suspense and anticipation that his terribly empathetic characters fulfill with pleasantly surprising acts of physical expression.

This S&M satire teeters on the verge of sleaze and exploitation but never descends into those domains due to Maggie Gyllenhaal's exquisite performance in a tricky sexual-psychological role.

A twisted and very funny rethinking of the romantic comedy genre. Great performances by Spader and Gyllenhaal.

A comedy? A wake up call? I'm not sure.

Perhaps there is something bold about saying pain can bring healing as long as it's applied by the right hand, but that seems obvious and normal thanks to... Gyllenhaal.

A great feature film with enough laughs, weirdness, fine performances and filmmaking flair to earn it a place on most critics' top ten of the year lists.

A grande proeza do filme e mostrar que, para os personagens de Gyllenhaal e Spader, seus desvios de personalidade nao sao defeitos, mas um caminho diferente para a felicidade.

It has an integrity to the kinkiness of its theme that doesn't shake loose but you'll get more out of it if you bring your analyst along with you.

Secretary might be too hot to handle for prudes and fuddy-duddies. But then again, it's the kind of film they might enjoy the most.

Playfully subversive and oddly life-affirming.

A sly female empowerment movie, although not in a way anyone would expect.

Silliness pervades the movie, even in small details.

Secretary operates on a level devoid of any plausibility or satisfaction. It's cold, overly-calculated, tasteless and meaningless in nearly every way possible.

Provocative, funny and one of the more offbeat love stories you're ever going to see.

Contradicts everything we've come to expect from movies nowadays. Instead of simply handling conventional material in a conventional way, Secretary takes the most unexpected material and handles it in the most unexpected way.

If there's a joke here, it's on anybody who's too uptight to groove on the whatever-gets-you-through-the-night love story Secretary envisions.

Sure, its artistic porn, but porn, nonetheless.

Anybody remember Shannon Tweed?

It's an interesting exploration of people finding and accepting themselves and then finding the puzzle piece that fits this new shape.

Even as the stakes are raised in Secretary's sexual give and take, the movie retains its detached, private mood.

Suspend your inclination toward the politically correct for a couple of hours and I bet you'll find yourself, as I did, rooting for these two loonies to live slappily ever after.

It does what good films do best; that is to provoke us, push our buttons, make us think and maybe even entertain us in the process.