If you have never heard of the film Secretary and had any questions as to why we were reviewing it for a fetish website all you need do is check out the DVD case. Staring back at you is a miniskirt clad girl bent over with two long fishnet stocking-covered legs emerging up and out of a sexy pair of high heels (if you think she looks ready for a spanking you'd be right).

Based on the short story by Mary Gaitskill, Secretary is an S&M coming of age/love story. Huh? Yes, I know it sounds rather odd, but what makes this film so good is that it isn't odd at all.

Back in the 1980's a film called My Beautiful Laundrette shocked audiences by telling a deeply moving love story between two gay men as if it was completely normal. Which it is. However, for the time (a high point for conservatism and homophobic attitudes) it was somewhat bucking the system to make such a movie. That's the kind of what Secretary does as well.

Director Steven Shainberg tells the story of Lee (played perfectly by Maggie Gyllenhaal), a young women recently brought home from a special institution she had been sent to when her parents found out she was cutting herself. Her mother is overprotective, her dad is an alcoholic and her friend Peter has a huge crush on her. Lee gets up the courage to find a job and after taking a typing class sees an ad in the paper for a lawyer looking for a secretary. She pulls up to the offices on a rainy day. Wearing her raincoat and hood she looks like a proud but scared little red riding hood as she slowly walks up to the house. Not to ruin the surprise but I think you can guess from the title of the film that she's hired. Her new boss is the troubled and obsessive compulsive E. Edward Grey played by James Spader who has made a career of playing in films with themes that are outside the sexual norm; see David Cronenberg's Crash.

I don’t want to tell you much more because I found the progression of their relationship to be very intriguing as well as erotic and I wouldn’t want to take the freshness of that experience away from you. I will say however, that like in My Beautiful Laundrette Shainberg doesn't make S&M into a weird or abnormal thing, which for anyone who is into such fetishes will be very much appreciated.

As I watched the movie it occurred to me that a great way to describe the middle part of the film is like a drawn out scene on a good BDSM website. Some sites are great at taking the scene along a progression that builds the tension and plays just as much, if not more so, with the internal mind games of S&M as with the external pain and punishment. Secretary does that, but over a longer period of time so that it's constantly playing out in a very genuine manner as the centerpiece to Lee's coming of age during her journey of self-discovery. The film however doesn't forget about Mr. Grey and his internal struggles either, which are interesting to watch, again giving S&M a human face as opposed to the weird-people-in-dark-rooms-with-chains that is probably the prevailing idea held by mundane mainstream society. That in the end is what makes Secretary a well written, well acted love story of self-actualization worth renting whether you have any interest in sadomasochism or not.