B-

James Spader gives an absolutely stunning performance in Steven Shainberg’s ostentatiously odd, unsettling “Secretary.” The angular young actor has previously had a couple of roles that suited his rather peculiar looks and odd persona (“Sex, Lies and Videotape” and David Cronenberg’s “Crash” come to mind), but for the most part he’s been stuck in conventional yuppie leading-man parts that haven’t made good use of his not-quite-handsome features. Here he plays to his strengths as E. Edward Grey, a highly-strung lawyer who just happens to be into sado-masochistic sex and bondage. The plot has to do with what happens when he hires Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a deeply troubled young woman with similar inclinations (as well as an urge to cut herself) as his office assistant.

Gyllenhaal’s is actually the central character in the script based on a story by Mary Gaitskill, and she plays it well enough. But Spader is so extraordinary that it’s simply impossible to take your eyes off him; it’s a very studied performance, but incredibly effective. From his very first scene–when the prospective employee finds him cowering in his office and he proceeds to conduct a surpassingly strange interview of her–he dominates things in more ways than one. Using as many facial muscles as George C. Scott did when he played Buck Turgidson in “Dr. Strangelove” but when necessary turning beautifully still and composed, Spader fashions from relatively slight material a portrait of a figure who’s at once terrifying and pathetic. Some of his sequences are offhandedly funny–just listen to the dialogue he spouts to clients over the phone–but ultimately his character is a deeply sad person; and Spader does such a brilliant job that he even makes him a sympathetic one.

Of course, a picture that’s effectively a weird plea for understanding of people with these unusual predilections is hardly likely to appeal to the mass audience (it’s comparable in that respect to Lynne Stopkewich’s 1996 “Kissed,” which portrayed necrophilia in a vaguely sympathetic light), and in any event Shainberg paces it with an extreme deliberation and archness that will be off-putting to most viewers even apart from the narrative; the makers stretch for a satisfactory resolution, moreover, and the final twenty minutes or so prove a letdown. The rest of the cast–Jeremy Davies as the nebbishy “regular guy” who’s attracted to Lee and Lesley Ann Warren as her protective mother are the most notable of them–is serviceable but unremarkable, and the production design and cinematography are calculated to give much of the picture a bright, candy-colored glow that’s deliberately at odds with the material–an effect that’s more interesting in theory than in its realization here. The result is a romantic film designed to make viewers queasy rather than comfortably content. It would be a pity, however, if Spader’s masterful turn didn’t get the attention it deserves. “Secretary” is far from a great movie, but Spader’s is a great performance.