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My last article for this column was about Last Tango in Paris, a film about a sexual affair with very disturbing undertones of power struggle. Both characters attempt to find themselves through this affair and try to control each other both physically and emotionally through sex and intimacy. Yet, this struggle is never acknowledged by either character above a subconscious level, and it is entirely possible to view their relationship without this aspect being a factor at all. It could be seen as merely two very screwed up people who like to have sex with each other and cannot find a way to be happy. This is true of many sexual affairs in films, notably Connie Summers' affair in Unfaithful. The power struggle is ignored in the face of the more obvious physical aspect: the sex.

But what if the opposite were true? What if in a sexual relationship the sex was a secondary factor and the power struggle was placed front and center? This would create a wildly different type of affair and an extremely different story. If both characters acknowledge, not necessarily aloud to each other, but at least to themselves, that the role of power is the central aspect of their affair, it will naturally cause them to interact with each other very differently than if neither of them understood the importance of the power that one character has over the other. This is the central conceit of Secretary.

Secretary is about Lee, a young woman who is hired by a lawyer named Mr. Grey to be his secretary. She begins an affair with him entrenched in BDSM, but the film is not just a cornucopia of kink. It is an exploration of how people are driven by their desires, desires they may be ashamed of, and how power, explicit, clearly defined power, can affect a relationship both negatively and positively. Both characters are consumed by addiction and through the course of the film learn that by denying a part of themselves, they are feeding rather than fighting that addiction. By examining the role that power plays in sexual affairs in a totally explicit, frank, and honest way, Secretary is able to unearth rarely spoken truths about the ways in which people can either conflate or separate sex and love and how crucial honesty is, both externally and internally, in any relationship.

Lee's life is defined by chaos. She is released from a psychiatric ward on the day of her sister's wedding, and within hours is dealing with her nervous mother and her alcoholic father. Is it any surprise that she relapses? We learn that Lee is an addict, not addicted to drugs or alcohol, but to self-mutilation. Unable to deal with the stress and emotional pain heaped on her by the outside world, Lee retreats to her room, to the box in which she keeps a number of tools she can use to cut herself. The tool that she picks clearly has a special significance; it is a toy ballerina whose foot has been sharpened to a point. The toy ballerina is a symbol of childhood innocence perverted, twisted and reshaped into a means of self-destruction.

The next time we see Lee harm herself is just after her parents end a shouting match with her father storming out. It is not a coincidence that stressful situations precede Lee's acts of self-harm. Just as Lee's father self-medicates with alcohol, Lee self-medicates with pain. When she puts a scalding hot teapot on her leg it is so the pain will consume her. She is able to lose herself completely in the pain, removing herself from everything that is making her miserable. Only in the moments of extreme pain is she able to forget about the rest of the world.

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