The Top Two Movies on Netflix Make the Most Disturbing Double Feature About Love & Consent (2024)

Warning: This article discusses issues of consent, rape, and disability.The top two movies on Netflix at the moment are both about unconventional love stories and the complicated nature of consent and sex, but they handle the subject in incredibly different ways and couldn't be more cinematically different. After premiering on Netflix yesterday, June 18, 2024, Fifty Shades of Grey quickly climbed to the number one spot in the most-watched movies on Netflix, replacing the previous number one, the documentary film, Tell Them You Love Me, which premiered June 14. They make for one of the most uncomfortable double features in movie history.

Sam Taylor-Johnson's cinematic adaptation of E.L. James' hit erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey was released in theaters nearly 10 years ago and became a blockbuster hit despite horrible reviews. An anomaly in the Hollywood system, the BDSM romance grossed nearly $600 million and spawned a trilogy based on James' book series. The film follows a young woman who captures the attention of a slightly older billionaire, who convinces her to sign a non-disclosure agreement and contract that immerses them into a bondage-based sadomasoch*stic relationship. It's the kind of movie that climaxes with a bare-butt spanking.

Fifty Shades of Grey

R

1/5

Based on the book by E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey is the first film in the trilogy that follows naive literature student Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), whose life changes upon meeting the complicated and tormented billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dorman). Drawn to each other, the two start a romantic relationship where Steele uncovers Grey's secrets - and explores her own personal desires.

Release Date

February 11, 2015

Director

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Cast

Dakota Johnson , Jamie Dornan , Luke Grimes , Jennifer Ehle , Eloise Mumford , Rita Ora

See Also

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Runtime

2h 5m

Main Genre

Drama

Writers

Kelly Marcel , E.L. James

Distributor(s)

Universal Pictures

Sequel(s)

Fifty Shades Darker , Fifty Shades Freed

Franchise(s)

Fifty Shades of Grey

Meanwhile, Tell Them You Love Me is a new documentary from filmmaker Nick August-Perna and executive produced by one of the greatest modern documentarians, Louis Theroux. August-Perna carefully traces the true story of Rutgers professor Anna Stubblefield, a married woman and academic who specializes in disability theory and intersectional philosophy. She is a proponent of something called 'facilitated communication,' a practice that supposedly allows people with disabilities like severe cerebral palsy to communicate. Her theory is that intelligence is not defined strictly by language, and that people with non-verbal disabilities have the potential for just as much intellect as anyone else; they are simply confined by their specific situation.

Related: 50 Shades of Grey's Jamie Dornan Responds to Audiences Who Associate Him with Christian

Anna finds herself falling in love with Derrick, a very disabled Black man who cannot communicate or take care of himself. Using facilitated communication, it at first seems as if Derrick is able to finally learn and express himself. He types rhapsodic, thoughtful notes, and expresses his increasing affection for Anna, who returns his emotion. They make love and begin a clandestine relationship, until Anna believes that Derrick wants to come clean with his family.

But is facilitated communication legitimate? Tell Them You Love Me goes behind the scenes and suggests that the practice is actually a projection of the person facilitating the communication; i.e. it was Anna the whole time who was spelling out Derrick's words and thoughts, essentially wooing herself. Derrick's mother and brother are thus convinced that Anna raped a disabled man with no ability to consent to sex; in Anna's mind, they are in love, and he initiated it.

As the film states, facilitated communication is "rejected by the American Psychological Association, the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, and several other prominent organizations. It is still practiced in some institutions and by people across the world who insist it is a vital means for some non-verbal people to communicate."

Tell Them You Love Me

4/5

A documentary about an academic and professor who specializes in disability and facilitated communication who falls in love with a severely disabled man, and the legal trouble that follows.

Release Date

June 14, 2024

Director

Nick August-Perna

Cast

Kate Dulcich , Jerron Herman , Brenda McCullough , Richard Rampolla , Julian Thomas

Main Genre

Documentary

Distributor(s)

Netflix

Tell Them You Love Me: 50 Shades of Consent

Tell Them You Love Me thus presents a disturbing moral quagmire about the nature of consent and sex. When is consent impossible? Another thought experiment: What if Derrick wanted to have sex with another severely disabled adult, and there is thus no power imbalance; is it consensual, then? At what point is someone too disabled for consent?

Pairing Tell Them You Love Me with Fifty Shades of Grey raises even more questions about consent and sex, this time in relation to contracts and agreements. If someone (say, Dakota Johnson, hypothetically) signs a contract with a richer and more powerful person (say, Jamie Dornan, for example) that stipulates she consents to sex over a certain period of time, is it thus impossible to rape her? If someone consents when intercourse begins, is it ever too late to no longer consent? This gets to a point of Tell Them You Love Me — is there a moral definition of consent that is different from a legal one?

In Fifty Shades of Grey, the idea of BDSM inherently toys with the concept of consent. If someone has a sexual fantasy of not consenting to intercourse, can they ever actually consent? If someone is tied up and gagged (non-verbal, if you will), lorded over by a wealthy man in a position of power (or a Rutgers professor), are they consenting? Questions like this may keep you up at night after watching Tell Them You Love Me and Fifty Shades of Grey, so you better get a safe word ready if you plan to watch. You can stream Tell Them You Love Me below:

Watch on Netflix