Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) lives in a disharmonious family and has "self-destructive" behavior since childhood. After returning home from a period of treatment in a mental treatment center, she has to reintegrate into normal life. So she learned typing and found a job as a typist in a law firm. At the beginning, Lee had a lot of problems with typing, which was discovered by her employer E. Edward Grey (James Spader). Grey called Lee to his office. In order to make Lee remember her mistakes deeply, he asked Lee to lie on the desk, and then he began to sexually abuse her with a whip. Over time, the two developed a wonderful emotion, which also weakened Lee's "self-destructive" tendency from another perspective. Lee fell in love with Grey, but Grey was ashamed to let people know his quirks, so he fired Lee. Lee's boyfriend Peter (Jeremy Davies) proposed to her, and she agreed, but on the wedding day, she fled to Grey's office...