Oh I see. I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but read summary of it and have looked at some reviews and discussions of the movie and that's where I saw some people talking about it working better as fantasy than real story (complaining about superficial characterization and other aspects of the story that were unlikely or far fetched). So I used the fantasy argument as a way to bypass the discussion about whether it was more BDSM or abuse stuff.

But having read the books yourself, you're obviously in a very good position to form an opinion about its merits. My information is secondhand.