In the Cut

A woman teaching English gets involved in a murder investigation. The police officer leading this investigation is instantly attracted to her. Also, from her point of view, this officer incorporates all she loves in her poetry and literature: rough and manly but also protective. She immediately feels this is an opportunity for her to put into practice all she has read about.

Out of her usual environment she finds it dangerous but also feels the excitement of the moment.

Quite cliché all. It is a simple detective story. The characters remain shallow. There is not depth in them and they do not evolve in any way.

I thought Jane Campion would do a much better job. Alas, even she makes mistakes.

What really annoyed me were all the references to "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf. All this quasi literism makes this film swanky.

I rated this movie a 6. Disappointing for Jane Campion. But not the worst movie I ever saw. There were some nice shots.

In fact, much of Frannie's allure is that she isn't shy about her body, or even afraid to engage in sexual activity with Detective James Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) in her two room apartment on Washington Square…

In the Red Turtle bar, Frannie (Meg Ryan) inadvertently watched a man, with a tattoo on his wrist, receiving oral gratification from a girl with blue fingernails having diamonds in them…

Soon after, there was a homicide in Frannie's neighborhood… The body of the woman, or part of her body, to be exact, was found in the garden outside her window…The girl who was murdered was Angela Sands with the blue fingernails …

As the psychopath strikes again and again, Frannie embarks on a powerfully physical sexual relationship with Malloy, despite her rising suspicions, later on, that the serial killer in question may very well be the 'good cop' with the 'three of spade' she saw once…

Meg Ryan plays a very interior character living out of her unconscious emotions and actions, seeming always scared of what she wants… Her only passion was poetry… Her former lover Kevin Bacon— mentally unbalanced—thinks he should stick around because he slept with her twice… Bacon maintains a threatening presence throughout the whole picture… Jennifer Jason Leigh— exquisitely sexy— graces the screen as Frannie's half-sister Pauline… In his few scenes with Ryan, Sharrieff Pugh proves to be sweet and charming but also bad and scary

In The Cut is one of those films where you'll sit and watch with a certain amount of puzzlement. It's a film that is unsure of whether it wants to be a mystery thriller with sexual overtones, or a provocative story about erotic sexual liaisons with a suspense thriller tossed in as the side salad. It doesn't work on either level.

Franny Averey (Meg Ryan) is a New York English teacher who has this strange habit of collecting words. She collects them off subway signs, from conversations, billboards or wherever they may happen to pop up. She does this because she says it is her passion. Now you may be wondering what this word collecting has to do with the story. The answer is nothing. It provides us no insight into Franny's character, and is nothing more than one of those odd character traits given to someone for no reason other than the fact that it makes them look quirky. I only bring it up because it is mentioned often in this film with no point or relevance as to why and it clearly demonstrates why so much of this film ends up being a pointless melange.

Fran also has a sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and their relationship is one of the few good things about the film. They talk as sisters who are close would, confiding intimately with each other and offering advise when needed. The problem is that Pauline's character is as murky as Fran's. She has an obsession with some medical doctor, lives over a strip club, and hangs around with the prostitutes that inhabit the premises. Pauline and Franny are two wild and crazy gals alright, but don't count on figuring out why.

One morning before heading to teach her English class, Franny stops at a local bar to meet and converse with one of her students Cornelius Webb (Sharrieff Pugh). From what I could figured out, she meets Cornelius because he has a new slang word for Franny to add to her word and phrases collection. Either that or they've had sex at some time or another. We are never told for sure. Perhaps Director Campion felt that if we knew for sure Franny was having sex with a student, it would sully her as a sympathetic character, although everything else she does in this film would be enough to degrade even the worst street corner hooker in any big city. At one point she travels down to the dark basement to use the Restroom, and in the shadows finds a woman performing oral sex on a man. Although it is very dark, and she watches from a distance, Franny sees a tattoo on the man's hand, but is unable to see anything of his face. Call it Creative Lighting 101.

It isn't long before Det. Malloy, (Mark Ruffalo)stops by Franny's apartment investigating the fact that some woman had lost her head, literally, in Annie's yard. There is supposed to be some underlying sexual tension between the two, but I never felt it. That must have come later that evening when Franny is lying in her bed having sexual fantasies about the good detective. We are never clued into why she is attracted by him. Malloy is a foul mouthed low class basic Neanderthal, and Franny is supposed to be educated and intelligent. I suppose some would call what Franny does as slumming.

It goes without saying that that eventually Franny and Malloy end up in the hay together in a steamy sex scene where Meg sheds her clothes and her girl next door image all at the same time. The scene is filmed with frankness and little modesty, but it is also a scene lacking in any kind of passion. It's as if Franny and Malloy are almost performing an act of self masturbatory gratification, and in a way perhaps they are. While watching scenes such as this one, I couldn't help but think of the film Looking For Mr. Goodbar with Diane Keaton. In that film, Keaton hopped from bed to bed of just about any who could please her on any particular night. It worked well in that film because we understood Keaton's makeup and motivation, and the self-destructive tendencies that came with it. Ryan's Franny lacks any kind of motivation about anything. Besides word collecting, we get pointless scenes of Ryan daydreaming about how her parents met. These daydreams pop up at the oddest moments, and are as useless to us as Ryan's word and phrase collecting habit.

After a while, more victims pop up. Franny begins to suspect Malloy might be the killer but sleeps with him anyway. Besides the student, Cornelius, Campion throws in a few more suspects such as Kevin Bacon playing Franny's obsessive ex, and even Malloy's partner. They don't add much to the story, except to keep you in some kind of pseudo suspense. They do have to have more than one murder suspect, don't they? The biggest problem with the murder story is Franny's own unexplained rashness and lack of intelligence. In other words, you'll earn your Nancy Drew merit badge long before Franny does.

If Campion was trying to create a suspenseful murder mystery, she didn't succeed. If she was trying to create a provocative film with sexual undertones she didn't succeed there either. If she was trying to create an artsy hodgepodge of meaningless and pointless images, well I guess she may have succeeded in that, and of course if that's the only thing you achieve than I have no choice but to give In The Cut my grade of D.

Deary me, some people get upset when a film isn't what they want it to be, don't they? How dare the film be what the film-makers set out to make, instead of what someone's narrow expectations dictate it should b?

Fancy In the Cut being gritty, seamy, sexy and deeply disturbing ... just like all the publicity (and the rating) warned us it would be. What a shock. How did the people expecting another Piano, or Meg Ryan Finds True Love Yet Again ever find themselves in the cinema?

As for those who have said they have walked out completely unmoved ... either they must be aliens or robots, or are fooling themselves, not wanting to acknowledge the truth of what they've seen on the screen. Seldom have I seen a film that so truly examines the dark side of our sexual impulses. I walked out quite shattered, and wandered around in a daze for a while.

Meg Ryan completely miscast? Ridiculous and insulting. How dare you tell an actress she has to be Little Mary Sunshine for the rest of her life. And she pulls it off brilliantly. She and Mark Ruffalo give the most stunning lead performances for a long time. Why? Because they're playing real, multi-layered people. Not goody-goodies or baddy-baddies.

Didn't like any of the characters? Must have a very limited range of acquaintances, or alternatively, don't like the real people you do know.

Thriller plot not thrilling? Admittedly it's not the strongest point in the film, but it has all the required shocks and surprises (and, you'd think enough gore for the modern audience), and while the revelation of the murderer is not the biggest twist ending ever, the final shot takes your breath away.

And anyway, Campion, while handling the thriller genre competently, is using it as a means to explore sexuality. And attraction. And how much of love involves physicality, carnality, trust, the desire to dominate, the desire to be dominated, and above all, the attraction of the DANGEROUS. Yes, adult stuff, not often tackled in mainstream films.

I think it's her best film ever (possibly excepting Sweetie), and I give it 9 out of 10.

"In the Cut" features solid acting and a nice color scheme but is mostly unremarkable in terms of story, script and visuals. Savvy viewers will recognize most of the plot elements and characters from other recent thrillers. The film does, however, have two remarkable elements: an amazing 5.1-channel sound mix and a nude scene that is notable not for its pornographic or fantasy-fulfilling qualities but for its stark realism.

Anyone who appreciates film sound should watch (or rather, listen to) "In the Cut" because it's one of the few existing films that uses 5.1-channel sound for more than SFX gimmicks or making sure the Dolby Digital logo appears on its DVD case. The film creates real ambiance and mood with its sound mix, which helped suck me into the story world and get a sense of the characters' environment. I first noticed this when Frannie descends the stairs in the restaurant (just before she sees the mysterious villain). As she walks through the noisy crowd and down the stairwell, the conversations, bustling and other background fade from the front to rear channels and mix with her footsteps as she descends. This, to me, is much more elegant use of 5.1-channel surround than sticking a few whizzing noises in the rear channels when a spaceship flies off the top edge of the frame. "In the Cut" makes full use of its available channels, which is more than 99% of high-budget films can say.

The other piece of the film that stuck with me was the nude scene with Frannie and Malloy that follows their inevitable hook-up. It's so rare to see a Hollywood nude scene that features characters just lounging with nothing on and in such an unromantic setting. It's especially amazing with an established star like Meg Ryan. There are no mysterious L-shaped sheets to hide their bodies but there is also no sense that Campion left them nude to attract voyeurs to her film. The characters don't assume erotic poses; they simply act as if they've already seen what they have to show each other, as most people do after sex. I don't often praise realism in films, especially stupid thrillers, but this scene stood out as much as the excellent sound design. If only the rest of the film could live up to those standards.