Hallelujah, it's raining Gyllenhaals! Someday people may look back at 2002 as the year the Gyllenhaals took over. Actually, if you want, you can look back to the later half of 2001 and we really should have known that this Gyllenhaal invasion was coming. Jake Gyllenhaal starred in Bubble Boy, which vanished without a trace in late August. Then Jake again vanished without a trace in Donnie Darko (in which sister Maggie had a blink-and-you-miss-it role as, predictably, Jake's sister). If you blinked you may also have missed Maggie in Riding In Cars With Boys. And then a blink early this spring would have caused you to miss Maggie in the "Why Josh Hartnett Can't Masturbate" comedy 40 Days and 40 Nights. But the DVD release of Donnie Darko gave that complicated little film a second life and laid the groundwork for a summer and fall of Gyllenhaal-related fun. First Jake bedded an older woman in Lovely and Amazing. Then Jake bedded an older woman in The Good Girl. There's every possibility that in next weekend's Moonlight Mile, Jake will, again, bed an older woman.

But in select theatres now is proof that the distaff side of the Tribe Young Gyllenhaal can, in fact, do more than just seduce older women. In Steven Shainberg's Secretary, Maggie gives the best performance of the year thus far by an actor or actress named Gyllenhaal (as I've mentioned, Jake will get a chance this weekend to take back his crown). Although Shainberg's film essentially rides its one-joke premise into the ground well before it ends, Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance in the lead is about as good as it gets for a young actress. Playing at part that could have fallen into caricature at any number of turns, Gyllenhaal manages to make her character funny, pathetic, sexy, intelligent, stupid, graceful, awkward, repressed, and outgoing, sometimes breaking into disparate extremes within a single take. Even when the film loses much of its energy down the stretch, she never does.

Gyllenhaal stars as Lee Holloway, a young woman who, as the film begins, is just being let out of an institution. It's the day of his sister's (totally wasted Amy Locane) wedding and while everybody is having fun at the party, Lee is already feeling out of place. Lee, we discover, is a cutter, a self-mutilator. And not just your garden-variety cutter, either. Lee has an elaborate cutting kit with different sharp implements, mini-band-aids, and bottles of iodine. Lee is about to cut herself with the sharpened toe of a porcelain ballerina when she decides to stop. Lee decides her life needs a purpose and she enrolls in a typing program at a community college and soon, armed with exceptional typing skills, Lee hits the job market. A mousy brunette with no references and a soft voice, Lee is unlikely even as a secretarial candidate. But when she shows up at the office of attorney E. Edward Grey (whose sign is the film's best visual joke), she finds an office in disarray, the old secretary exiting in tears, and a kindred spirit in the attorney. Grey (James Spader), is damaged goods, an unblinking office autocrat whose major obsessions are trapping mice, feeding tropical plan and editing Lee's typing assignment with a bright red Sharpie.

Secretary operates on a very simple amplified set of premises: The relationship between a boss and a secretary can, at times, resemble the relationship between a master and a slave. But additionally, the relationship between a boss and secretary can achieve a level of openness and intimacy that almost resembles love. So Secretary takes these notions and plays them to their not-so-logical extremes — Lee and her attorney soon discover a shared pleasure in pain and a relationship grows between them that becomes increasingly kinky, going from basic trust games to SM fun to stuff far more demented and experimental. The relationship begins with Lee clearly as the submissive and the attorney as the dominant, but as the film goes along, wouldn't you know it? The roles shift so that by a certain point, the couple achieves a kind of mutual domination. There's no whipping, but there's lots of beating, shackles, nudity, masturbation, and humiliation. People who miss the humor (as well as the point) of the movie will natter about how it's demeaning to women (it's not). And people with conservative sexual tastes will probably be disgusted, repulsed, and enraged. Those people shouldn't go see the movie. It's pretty clear from the posters and advertising that Secretary isn't a warm fuzzy family film.

With his previous film, Steven Shainberg did a remarkable thing — he botched a Jim Thompson novel, making Thompson's A Swell Looking Babe into Hit Me, an Elias Koteas vehicle that nobody nor their mother saw. It takes work to destroy Jim Thompson. But from what I understand, in certain circles, Mary Gaitskill's short story "Secretary" has been revered since its 1989. And if anybody has read it an wants to tell me how long it is, I'd be interesting in hearing. Because on one hand, Secretary, as adapted by Shainberg and Erin Cressida Wilson, is an example of how to wonderfully turn a brief short story (that feels redundant, but whatever) into a 104 minute film. But on the other hand its an example of why it's such a darned difficult thing to do.

But the positives first: If you'll recall, constant reader, I'm not fully convinced by the digital video revolution. I have yet to see more than a half dozen digital video features that didn't look downright ugly. Secretary is, thankfully, shot on 35 mm and for what it is, this is a beautifully shot little film. Cinematographer Steven Fierberg (whose last name is really really close to mine) gives the film a wonderful color palate of the kind that digital video can match in only the rarest of circumstances. Fierberg takes special pleasure in finding things to match the wonderful blue-green of Maggie Gyllenhaal's eyes, a color which is nearly a character in itself. Fierberg gets a big assist from some technical wizards who just don't get enough credit most most days. Production designer Amy Danger and art director Nick Ralbovsky only really work with a few sets, but each matches the quirky tone of the movie. The clutter of Lee's home and room, a cheesy Laundromat/restaurant, and the attorney's office each have a separate character and texture and color, a stylized version of reality matching the dark satire of the film itself. And costumer Marjorie Bowers and make-up artists Raqueli Dahan and Robert Hall oversaw Gyllenhaal's transformation from wallflower to wildchild in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible. So for a film of limited budget, Secretary looks pretty darned good.

If only the story were able to sustain itself a little better. Secretary is, really, a two person character study. Lee and E. Edward Grey are the only characters whose narrative arcs remain consistent throughout the film. Otherwise, all of the film's supporting characters are left dangling, brought into the story to prove the occasional point, but never actually working as people. The supporting parts contribute to the plot, but not to the film as a whole. I've already mentioned the wasted Amy Locane, who is a truly underused perky blond resource. There's also Lesley Ann Warren as Lee's mother. She's very funny in her few scenes, especially when she rounds up all the knives in her house and chains them up in a cabinet and her conversations with Lee are priceless. She just never grows as a character. Ditto with Jeremy Davies as Peter, Lee's bland boyfriend with bad facial hair. This role represents Jeremy Davies's ongoing effort to become Bill Pullman for a new generation — he's becoming the prototypical nice bland guy always to eventually be replace by a more interesting alternative. His is a part without context. E. Edward Grey has an ex-wife who makes no impression as a character, though her impact is felt throughout.

James Spader has done enough different versions on warped sexuality that nothing he does here is actually surprising. That's not just a liability, though. Putting Spader in this role immediate conjures up memories of such delightfully deviant films as sex, lies, and videotape, Crash, Dream Lover, and Stargate. Here, his part mostly consists of not blinking and perpetually looking like the weight of the world is about to crush him. His performance isn't complicated (although he does complicated things), but it is committed. We buy Spader as a sexually perverse person and his work here gives us no reason to doubt.

Mostly, though, all hail Maggie Gyllenhaal. Unless there's a spectacular run of outstanding performances by lead actresses over the next few months, this is the kind of acting that demands notice. Does Gyllenhaal have diverse potential as an actress? Who knows? Also, who cares? Every performance in its moment, eh? Gyllenhaal is not a conventional looking Hollywood starlet. And no conventional looking Hollywood starlet would have dared to play this part. It's like there's a light inside of her that she can turn on and off entirely at will. When the light is off, Maggie Gyllenhaal is the plainest of Plain Janes, a woman you would never look at twice, who could sit in her corner of the office cutting herself to bits and you'd never think to ask what's wrong. But when that light goes on, Gyllenhaal can be anything and anybody and she's impossible not to fall in love with. The film requires the audience to fall for Gyllenhaal despite all of the character's weaknesses and after seeing the movie, it's just tough to imagine anybody else playing Lee...

Secretary starts off as a dark workplace satire and becomes more serious as it goes along. And the more serious got, the less interested I was in what was happening. The more literally the film asked me to take what was happening onscreen, the less I was willing to tolerate it. What starts off as a fairy tale about a ugly duckling who uses shackles and butt-smacking as the path to becoming a swan stops being so magical after a while. So this goes down as one of those heavily qualified three-star recommendations. If you like dark comedies and are hip to a little BDSM, then the rewards of Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance are well-worth any failings that Secretary may have.

Recommended: Yes