Soft Porn.

Rating: 4/10 (21 November 2015)

It would be nice if parents stopped naming their little girls Dakota. As it stands, we're going to have an entire generation of women named Dakota. This particular Dakota is rather good, as far as it's possible to tell from her performance here as the young woman so much in love that she puts up with all sorts of bondage until she finally cries "Enough!" and the affair ends.
She's an attractive woman but not TOO attractive. Rather pleasant looking, with big blue appealing eyes. Her figure is feminine and ordinary. She's the kind of woman men might find themselves staring at in a supermarket without quite understanding why.
And she handles the role well. She's a virgin, her voice a tentative, slightly breathless whine. She has a menial job -- sales lady in a hardware shop -- like Sylvester Stallone's girl friend in "Rocky." And she accidentally runs into Jamie Dornan, a young, strapping, handsome, commanding presence who is filthy rich and courts her in a way every girl seems to dream of being courted. At least I guess so, because the pattern crops up so commonly, as in "Pretty Woman." From the beginning it was clear that this story was shaped by women, two of them in fact -- E. L. James and Kelly Marcel. If it had opened with an outrageous burst of violence, somebody's brains splattered on the wall, I'd figure a testosterone-ridden man was behind it all.
Jamie Dornan is a big nuisance. He stares fixedly. He only blinked twice, I counted. He never smiles. He issues orders. He seems to know everything, or thinks he does. And he's got the dough to back it all up. "Come with me," he orders, and, poof, we're doing snap rolls in a sailplane. "Don't fall in love with me," he advises her sternly, so she falls in love with him.
After the ritual deflowering comes the S&M but only its frisson. He never does anything very serious to her, just tickling her with a feathery lash while she's bound hand and foot. I don't know why this was painted as so scandalous. Far more can be found in other films, like "Nine Weeks" or "Nine Songs," though you have to be ready for that last one.
Bondage and cheap love stories not being very interesting as far as I'm concerned, I thought the movie was lousy. You want it to have some emotional impact? Don't just cast the female lead as a wimp. Cast her as an overweight wimp. Or a menopausal wimp. Any normal man would like to pinch and bite Dakota Johnson. That's too easy, a sell out.
If you must have a dominant/subordinate relationship in which the woman participates, try "Secretary," a much better film, even without nudity.