Much Ado about Nothing

Rating: 8/10 (1 March 2015)

My summary may seem like a contrast to my vote, but they are in perfect balance. There was so much talk about how bad the movie is that I had to go see if it was really true. It's not. Let's me explain why. One half of the world accuses it of being perverse. Have you seen Nymphomaniac? FSG is beautifully made even if you don't compare it to anything. Adult movies are supposed to provoke lust, erotic movies are supposed to arouse, this one does neither. FSG teases your senses and takes your breath away, because the sex scenes are not too long and not too short, but perfectly timed and purely beautiful. The other half of the world accuses it of being cheesy and trite. My question is, how many romcoms did you see? If you liked any of them, you're lying about this movie: FSG is deeper than a romcom. If you don't like romcoms, this movie is just not your taste, stop chastising it. A lot of people hated Twilight, but a lot of people loved it, which didn't make the movie any better or worse. I read the books, I wasn't the fan of them, I was prepared to be disappointed when I went to the cinema (purely out of curiosity and love for art). Like many reviewers on this site, I was pleasantly surprises. Dakota is natural in her take on Ana's character, Jamie showed an amazing transformation from a cute guy he is in life to the cold and domineering Christian. The music is the best part of the movie, the pictures are spectacular. There's humor, love, romance, love, nice ending. I wish some of the dialogs had been better thought through, and some of the secondary story lines had been a bit less vague, but those didn't stop me from enjoying the movie. A friend of mine said the movie is about making contracts. I think it's rather about trust (not unlike any relationship, including the contractual ones). Ana is free in her concept of a relationship, she's familiar with all things spiritual from literature and she has this romanticized notion of what life with a man should be like (watching her mother, her friend, reading books), but she fears physical pain. Christian is free in terms of physical things (except for his issue with touching), there's almost nothing he can't do sexually, but he fears normal relationships, he has complexes in the spiritual world. So these two people come together and realize: she has to trust him physically, he has to trust her emotionally. This is where it all goes haywire, because trusting another human being is extremely hard. This movie, like any piece of art, deserves a deeper look (a lot of research lies behind the story to the credit of E.L. James). Feel free to hate it, you're making it notorious, hence popular, hence commercially viable. But feel free to love it too, no one has a right to make your opinion for you.