longbough

I think you ought to be fair to your tastes and rate this film much higher - I would.
I agree It's a terrific "spanking film" because of its sensitive and honest treatment of some of the underlying emotional and psychological dynamics of this sort of relationship (you don't really get that angle from "backroom spanking videos"). That earns it a 9.5/10 in my book.

I think film ratings are a matter of taste anyway. Someone who doesn't care for the subject will rate it lower, of course. But that goes the same for action films, sci-fi films and romantic comedies.

On a personal level I once had an intense year long relationship like in "The Secretary" with a woman I met on on a flight from NY to SF. The film touched a lot of memories for me and I cried while watching it.

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"I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence." - Mahatma Ghandi