We know Ana reads Jane Austen, and here, for a second, she sounds like the heroine of “Northanger Abbey,” who is mocked for always assuming the worst, or, at any rate, the most gothically arousing. “You’re the complete serial killer,” Ana says. Their next encounter comes at a hardware store, where Christian is stocking up on masking tape, cable ties, and rope.

Either she has a cold sore or these folks are getting ready to rumble.

He could have said “monetize.” He also lends her a pencil, bearing the word “Grey,” the tip of which she rubs against her lip. He is interested in “what motivates them-what incentivizes them.” Any woman should run a mile from a man who uses the verb “incentivize,” but things could have been worse, I guess. “I’ve always been good at people,” he says, as though people were Scrabble or squash. Ana, ushered into his presence, stumbles first over the threshold and then over her words, but begins to melt as he expounds on his bountiful gifts. (Don’t you adore rich men who hide themselves away?) She is there in lieu of her roommate, who was meant to interview Grey for the college newspaper but has fallen sick.

Good choices, I reckon, especially Johnson, who, as the granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, knows everything about predators who stare and swoop.Īna, as she is usually called, first meets Christian Grey at Grey House, which is home to Grey Enterprises, in Seattle. Who could conceivably play Christian Grey, the awkward young billionaire with the extensive neckwear collection, let alone Anastasia Steele, the English-lit major who is also, as we gasp to learn, one of the leading virgins of Vancouver, Washington? Many combinations were suggested, my own preference being Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, who made such a lovely couple in “The Prince of Tides,” but in the end the lucky winners were Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson. Nothing has exercised the novel’s devotees-the Jamesians, as we must think of them-quite as much as the proper occupants of the central roles.

Now, after an enticing buildup, which took to extreme lengths the art of the peekaboo, the film of the book is here. That leaves a solid eighty million or so who, upon reading sentences such as “He strokes his chin thoughtfully with his long, skilled fingers,” had to lie down for a while and let the creamy waves of ecstasy subside. James, has been bought by more than a hundred million people, of whom only twenty million were under the impression that it was a paint catalogue. If the figures are correct, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E.

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