Not quite as outré as it sounds, Secretary somehow manages to be both sexy and compelling - though it starts to wear just a bit at 104 minutes. Spader is very good in a role that builds on the reputation he flirted with in sex, lies and videotape and embraced in Crash, while Gyllenhaal is just phenomenal. The shades of experience she registers in her performance, from puzzled to frightened to ecstatic and back again, are key to making the subject matter palatable - and more, to giving it emotional coherence. If there's a joke here, it's on anybody who's too uptight to groove on the whatever-gets-you-through-the-night love story envisioned by screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson and director Steven Shainberg. (The story by Mary Gaitskill that provides the film's best scenes, nearly verbatim, is a lot more ambiguous.) Like Pedro Almodovár's Talk to Her, Secretary is a perversely romantic yarn (or is it a romantically perverse one?) that borders on the surreal - and ultimately feels more pure and satiating than its safely straight counterparts.