sabotabby | 50 Shades of Grey: Pt. 2

Previously on 50 Shades of Grey, Ana met Christian. Christian is into kink and lots of paperwork and Ana is into being a virgin and reading Thomas Hardy. No one has a job. Ana has found out that Christian doesn’t do relationships and Christian has just found out that Ana has never even kissed a boy.

Now that the movie has very clearly established that:
1) He makes women sign contracts before having sex.
2) He does not make love; he fucks hard.
3) He is only interested in kink and not a traditional relationship.
4) She has zero sexual experience, not even kissing.
5) He doesn’t sleep in bed with women after fucking them hard.
Christian drags Ana off to his bedroom and has soft-focus, Sarah McLachlan-scored sex with her. It is not merely vanilla sex. It is vanilla-scented-candle sex. It is the pumpkin spice latte of sexual acts.

pumpkinspicelatte

“I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”

I bet he makes the most hilarious O-face in the history of ever, given how funny his face looks in general, but we don’t get to see it because this movie is very male-gazey, despite ostensibly being directed at women, so I’m just going to let this parade of O-face gifs fill in the blanks.

Christian gets up and plays his piano, alone, in his giant-ass penthouse, because he is full of unexplored angst. Look, you dough-faced twat, I don’t want to explore your rich whiteboy angst. Do you know how many displaced Syrians are fleeing a civil war in their homeland right now?

Now, I’ve been to Seattle a lot and it has some pretty cool space-age architecture but can someone tell me what Tony Stark’s arc reactor is doing in the right-hand part of this frame and whether it’s an actual feature of the Seattle skyline?

Then they bone some more, again in a pretty vanilla way that’s not remotely kinky in a world where the Chuck Tingle masterpieces, “Oppressed In The Butt By My Inclusive Holiday Coffee Cups,” “Anally Yours, The Unicorn Sailor” and of course
“Pounded In The Butt By My Book "Pounded In The Butt By My Book 'Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt'" all exist.

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God bless you, sir. You provide an important service to humanity and we are all grateful for it.

So the thing about him not sleeping with the women he fucks hard turns out to be as bullshit as the contract thing.

Ana wakes up and makes pancakes despite the fact that he is a gazillionaire and probably has an actual chef working for him, because this is every woman’s fantasy, amirite? To make pancakes in some fuckboy’s kitchen.

She strips naked and he admires himself in the mirror. Seems accurate.

Christian gets out one of his identical ties, as featured on the cover of the novels, and ties her up with it and they do more sex and I have never been so bored in all my life. Don’t these people have jobs to get to? Are their jobs just all-day fucking?

lenin facepalm

His mom comes over unexpectedly and is clearly happy that he had the sex with a woman who is not a blow-up doll. Really, really happy. Quite a bit happier than you’d want your mother to be if you were in this situation.

This is very awkward. I feel secondhand embarrassment squick watching this and I’m genuinely sorry for, like, the gaffer or whoever who went to very reputable and expensive film school and dreamed of becoming the next Tarkovsky but instead he is gaffing away, watching the hero’s overbearing mother be ecstatic that her son had the sex, but not in, like, an artsy Hitchcockian way but in a way that suggests she is a nice person who is for whatever reason overjoyed that her son put his penis in a vagina.

I’ll be over here in the corner, Freuding really hard.

Ana gets all freaked out that he wants her to sleep in the fugly room and he has kept 15 other women in the fugly room and he doesn’t ever want to go to movies like a normal couple and demands to be taken home, which I totally understand. He shows her all of his cars—there are many; how many cars does one guy need?—and instead of calling Taylor, he drives himself in the shiniest car. She falls asleep as they’re driving. But then instead of taking her back to Portland, he parks in the woods and says, “Let’s go for a walk.”

This is the point at which I would be like, “No, fuck no, eat a dick, I am not going for a walk in the woods in the middle of nowhere with you,” but she shows absolutely zero trepidation despite the face that she has just found out that he’s a sadist with mommy issues and 15 mysterious ex-lovers that something happened to and an entire room devoted to torture. A 4.0 GPA don’t make you streetwise, lady.

Then he tells her that he was the victim of statutory rape at the hands of one of his mother’s friends, and that’s how he became kinky, and he sees nothing wrong with this and is still friends with her.

He talks about how awesome it is to be a sub and how he’s never had sex in his own bed and she’s special. I dunno, if it’s so awesome, how come he doesn’t offer to let her dom?

YAY MORE PAPERWORK. It’s been about 30 seconds since the last round of paperwork and I was beginning to miss it.

(And more “laters babe.”)

This is The Contract, btw.

Christian pays for some guy to either fix her computer or deliver a new one, I’m not sure which, and we’re treated to more loving close-up shots of paperwork, followed by the mail being sorted.

I wonder if Chuck Tingle ever wrote a book about being pounded in the butt by paperwork. If so, Christian Grey is probably really into it.

As a cinematic technique, I hate this. The existence of text messaging and email does pose a problem for filmmakers, as if your setting is contemporary, you have to acknowledge that your characters are reading tiny print on a screen basically all the time, and that is very hard to show in a way that looks good.

I’m sure, however, that there is a solution that isn’t this. It’s so fucking cheesy.

Also, texting is what I—a regular person—do with my friends and loved ones. When I want to fuck someone and someone wants to fuck me, we usually text each other to figure out logistics to meet up. We also send funny gifs and links and things about cats and sometimes YouTube videos. That’s pretty normal. But romantic fantasy is not supposed to be normal; it’s supposed to be about something that wouldn’t ordinarily happen. If I want to see two people who want to bone each other texting each other, I would—

—well actually I stopped writing this review for a bit to do that. I do have a life you know. My point is that I would like some creativity in their interactions here, not just texting.

Time for some close-ups of—you guessed it—PAPERWORK!

Oooh baby, show me your ~~Times New Roman~~ BODONI. No, bolder! BOLDER! Italicize that shit! Yesssss!

OH YEAH YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKE. LATERS BABE.

As Ana prepares to move to Seattle, we hear some of the terms of The Contract, because I guess just showing us close-ups of every page is going a bit too far, even for this movie. It’s—look, I don’t want to judge, but I’m pretty squicked by it. She has to agree to any sex act he wants, enthusiastically, with the exception of hard limits that she outlines in the contract. She can’t drink to excess (no more puking with Jose, I guess), do drugs, put herself “at any unnecessary risk,” have sex with anyone other than Christian, and she has to follow a diet and exercise plan.

I don’t really know that much about BDSM but is this a really common thing? Like, I can see the appeal of whips and bondage and the like, and you might want to spell out in a written contract what you are and aren’t into for the sake of maintaining immersion in a scene, but this seems like an entirely different arrangement that is about controlling her life outside of the bedroom, and she doesn’t seem like a savvy enough character to knowingly consent to it.

Also, remember that he’s made 15 other women sign this thing. I find it difficult that, at his age, he would be able to find 15 women up to his standards willing to agree to some of these terms.

Let’s say for example, that he wants to fuck a woman who is into rock-climbing. He lives in Seattle. Out of 15 women, who are not random women but presumably in their 20s, physically fit, and affluent (because that is probably his type), living in a city with a shitload of climbing gyms and in driving distance from a mountain, this movie expects me to believe that either none of them have this particular hobby or are willing to give it up to have sex with him. In a city with legal weed, that none of them would object to having to give up recreational drugs? Seattle has some of the best microbrews and restaurants anywhere I’ve ever been, and 15 presumably beautiful women are willing to give up all that for dough-faced boy. It’s not like he’s going to marry any of them and make them rich, because he’s said that he’s not into that.

I just don’t see the appeal. I guess he’s generous with the gifts and you get to keep the cars and computers when he dumps your ass. But is that worth giving up dinner at Joule’s and the Bluebird ice cream parlor?

Bluebird’s ice cream is really, really good you guys. If you're ever in Seattle (or if you live in Seattle), totally check it out.

NO ONE WILL BE ADMITTED DURING THE EXCITING PAPERWORK MONTAGE SEQUENCE.

Oh, I guess he does go to work occasionally. His work involves sitting at a table with men in suits while they look at paper. Are you surprised?

He keeps nagging her to sign the contract, and she keeps putting him off, and they don’t hang out or anything, and this is what passes for romance with the kids these days.

Here’s another thing.

She’s finishing her thesis. She’s just about to graduate from college. Her computer has been broken since the movie started, and she has a new computer, which likely doesn’t have her thesis on it, let alone her regular bookmarks or passwords for social media. Did she back up her thesis? Is she at all worried about this?

No she is Googling porn. Fuck you, Miss Anastasia Steele. I bet your professors hate you, and they are right to do so.

Finally she decides she’s not into being bound so on and sends him an email saying, “It’s been nice knowing you.”

SO HE FUCKING BREAKS INTO HER FUCKING APARTMENT WHAT THE FUCK.

Instead of phoning the cops, she has more sex with him and an ice cube. He’s disappointed that she hasn’t made up her mind about The Contract, she’s disappointed that he won’t stay the night. Life is nothing but disappointment, and anyone who says different is trying to sell you something.

The poor cinematographer has run out of ways to shoot people signing paperwork.

I swear to fuck this is more Ayn Rand than Ayn Rand. Although at least Rand’s characters managed to soullessly rape each other while spouting awkward dialogue without having a lot of texting first.

Ana has leveled up in fashion. How does she afford this? She’s now unemployed and it’s been established that she has no taste and doesn’t know how to dress herself.

Look, I’m okay with continuity errors. Is the Doctor half-human or all Gallifreyan? How did Mulder and Scully get out of Antarctica? Who dialed Cypher in and out of the Matrix while he was betraying Zion? Plot holes are fine if you are telling a complicated story that is about something else and you have a lot of different things going on to keep the audience interested.

But this is not a complicated story. There are no aliens or killer AIs or time travel paradoxes or things blowing up to distract us. There is practically no plot. So people are gonna notice if you make it a plot point that the character doesn’t know how to dress and then suddenly she knows how to dress. Because we’re bored and we need something to think about while we’re being bored.

Never mind. You know what? I don’t care. Let’s go on to another very thrilling paperwork scene.

This is hot to someone. I’m not sure who, but someone.

Actually, this scene is one of the bits that works for me, because it’s clearly about her being into the idea of roleplay and turning all the paperwork into a sexual thing. It’s not my kink, but it’s probably the strongest scene, visually and narratively. Which isn’t saying much because it involves literal shit.

Uh so they go on about the sex acts she is or is not willing to do. When my co-worker told me about this she was very bemused by the discussion of anal fisting. Does anyone do this? Does anyone ever go from being a virgin one week to being anal fisted the next week? Would it leave you with an inability to control your bowel movements? Does 40-year-old Anastasia Steele need to wear Depends? I shit you not (sorry!) we had a very lengthy discussion about this over lunch at work, accompanied by me making hand gestures and referring to the film as “50 Shades of Brown,” because I am the actual worst and everyone hates me.

I was ultimately disappointed that she says no to both anal and vaginal fisting when my co-worker had led me to believe the opposite in order to get me to watch this movie.

I was also disappointed that nowhere in this was it mentioned whether either of these characters would have sex with the head of a dead pig. I mean, I didn’t expect it to come up but it’s been about 4000 words since I last made a David Cameron joke.

goodpig

She manages to get her address changed on The Contract and also a once a week regular date. He tries to do the sex but she walks out after not signing the paperwork.

Will she sign it? Will there be appendices? Footnotes? Stay tuned next for the shocking twist at the end.
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