Newsnight Review discussed the film Secretary, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring James Spader.

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(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

BONNIE GREER:
For the first 15 minutes I sat there and thought, what the hell is this? I was really upset. Then because I was stuck there, I had a job, I had to be there, I sat and gradually was sucked into the world of these two people. It reminded me of the fact that cinema essentially is a dream. A lot of the movies you see now are basically things that can be on television or big video games, but this is an entire reality that if you give it a chance, you go into this story, this world exists nowhere. It doesn't exist outside anywhere. You can't take your morality in there, your feminist politics. You have to go into this story. It's constructed and built so beautifully, shot so beautifully that eventually you start to see this is a Cinderella story where the guy is Cinderella. He is Sleeping Beauty at the end of the day. I thought it was fantastic.

ADAM MARS-JONES:
I wish I'd seen the movie you saw. The one I saw doesn't conform to my perception, which is that it was better played than written. When you get down it to, it's really quite banal and quite safe because we start with a heroine that's mutilating herself. Any arrangement she made with her sex life would have to be on the path toward healing. It's safe to watch because we know she can't fall apart anymore. She can only come together. When you get down to it, they're both terrified of being abandoned and he thinks he's afraid of intimacy. The pop psychology isn't strong. The dreaminess goes when she's sitting at the desk because she's been told to stay there in a wedding dress like Julia Roberts gone wrong and she's talking to people and she's on television. This transgressive world can't go public like that. I thought what mood it had did rather vanish.

TIM LOTT:
I can't see how Adam can see this as a safe film. It's a dangerous film to make. He could have come very badly off with one foot going wrong. He does go wrong in a few places. I think James Spader's pervy act is getting a bit worn now. He does it in every film I've seen him in. He does it beautifully, but he slightly overdoes it, as well. It's the tenderness in the film that redeems it. That's how they get away with it. It's a love story and it avoids being pornography through being love.

ADAM MARS-JONES:
This is a story about a woman who chooses the bad boy over the good boy, thinking by choosing him she'll make him good.

BONNIE GREER:
The film is about James Spader.

TIM LOTT:
We don't know anything about him.

BONNIE GREER:
He gradually comes to accept something about himself. When he says, "I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore", she says, "Yes, you can." So when she looks at us at the end of the film, she's basically saying, "I told you this is who he is."

ADAM MARS-JONES:
Her wholesomeness is there throughout. She starts with this sort of bouncy trudge when she's depressed and ends with a sort of serene strut. Her persona, the way she reads on screen, is much calmer than a troubling movie would have. I think Blue Velvet goes back and forth across that line, abnormal, normal, obsessed, loved, leaves you not knowing where you are. I always felt safe with her.