Fifty shades blander: Nothing dark or daring about soft-core BDSM fantasy

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This article was published 09/02/2017 (3273 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s something inherently weird about sitting in a movie theatre with a bunch of strangers for the express purpose of watching a titillating movie.

It’s not as if it’s a ‘70s porn theatre, where viewers left five seats between them and were careful not to make eye contact. Women (and it will be mostly women) will fill the rows to gasp and giggle together at the complicated romance of naive young Anastasia (Ana) Steele (a pretty adorable Dakota Johnson) and the fabulously wealthy, terribly tortured Christian Grey (Irish dreamboat Jamie Dornan), a business tycoon who wants Ana to be his submissive in a consensual BDSM relationship.

But Fifty Shades Darker, the second film in the trilogy based on E L James’ erotic bestsellers, is porn. Penis-free porn, it’s true — fairy-tale, wish-fulfillment, put-a-ring-on-it porn — but art it ain’t.

And if the stereotype holds that women want more plot with their porn, Darker delivers — in terms of amount, if not in actual story.

At two hours, it’s as padded as a training bra; you want to take director James Foley aside and gently remind him that everyone will be fast-forwarding the boring parts (everything that doesn’t feature Dornan’s pecs) when they watch it on their PVRs.

Speaking of those pecs, it’s disheartening that a movie aimed mainly at a heterosexual female audience still insists on fetishizing female nudity. We can all agree Johnson is lovely, but the camera lingers on her naked body with a very male gaze (and let’s not even get into the garter-belt get-up she wears at one point).

Meanwhile, aside from his casual shirtlessness, Dornan, who surely was cast only partially for his acting ability, is rarely treated to the same kind of cinematic ogling. He gets away with one lascivious belly-button shot and a couple of brief butt exposures. (The exception is a hilariously hunky workout scene, where he shows off his impressive core strength.)

Author James, whose husband Niall Leonard penned the script, was clearly at pains to make Darker hew more closely to her book. To that end, it’s filled with subplots that are either bizarre/troubling (Christian’s suicidal former submissive stalks Ana; Ana’s boss sexually harasses her) or pointless (the world’s most anticlimactic helicopter crash).

At one point, Ana is made fiction editor at a publishing house literally overnight, as if she’s Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30.

It’s also baffling that anyone bothered to cast any name actors for the minuscule and thankless supporting roles. The talented Victor Rasuk pops up briefly to make puppy-dog eyes at Ana; Bruce Altman has about three lines as someone who might as well be credited as Editor No. 3; and Marcia Gay Harden basically lets her makeup do the acting as Christian’s adoptive mother.

All viewers will care about, however, is how Christian, a lifelong devotee of sado-masochist sex, is changed by the love of a good woman — a good woman who’s not totally averse to dabbling in light bondage.

In that sense, the more playful, flirtier Darker is actually lighter than Fifty Shades of Grey. Christian seems like a human being, not a handsome, chilly automaton, and there’s some semblance of a real relationship between him and Ana, which naturally translates to a sexier vibe.

Their relationship, however, still suffers from all kinds of ick that prevents the film from being enjoyed as escapist entertainment. It makes Christian a deviant and Ana a sexual saint who, merely through the force of her pure love, transforms him into something “better” than he was.

If you need to make such fundamental changes to your Prince Charming, maybe he’s not meant to be your happy ending.

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @dedaumier