Saturday, 18 September 2021 19:37

In the Cut

IN THE CUT

US, 2003, minutes, Colour
Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kevin Bacon, Nick Damici.
Directed by Jane Campion)

Once touted as a star vehicle for Nicole Kidman, the central role of this erotic thriller has gone to Meg Ryan with Nicole Kidman acting as an executive producer. The film is based on a novel by Susanna Moore who collaborated on the screenplay with director, Jane Campion.

Jane Campion has been interested in women's issues in all her films, from Sweetie and The Piano to Angel at My Table, Holy Smoke and Portrait of a Lady. Her heroines are strong while vulnerable. They are menaced by men with power and have to make decisions to assert themselves and discover their stronger selves. In this way, In the Cut is very much a Jane Campion film.

She has gone back to some of the thrillers of the 70s for their ambiguous portrayals of women. Meg Ryan looks a lot like Jane Fonda's Bree Daniels in Klute, a film in which there was a relationship between a prostitute and a detective. Another 70s film for reference is Looking for Mr Goodbar where Diane Keaton plays a rather proper Catholic schoolteacher who goes out in the evenings to rough bars where her repressed sexuality surfaces in violence. In In the Cut, Meg Ryan is a teacher whose sexuality is repressed (especially in comparison with her more adventurous half-sister, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) but whose prurience in a bar leads her to more overt relationships and behaviour as well as to physical danger from a killer.

Mark Ruffalo plays a detective who is attracted to the teacher and her intellectual sophistication and whose frank earthiness fascinates her. There are some frank sex sequences between them as well as frank talk and discussions.

While the focus is on Meg Ryan's character, her loneliness and isolation, her teaching poetry and studying language and slang and then her sensual and erotic experiences, there is a police investigation going on in the background. Unfortunately, this aspect is not so well constructed and it is not hard to anticipate who the murderer is.

The film is literally dark with many shadows, intense close-ups and settings which remind us of past films but also that themes of repression and sensuality are perennial.

1. The evocation of the title? Hints of violence? Erotic undertones?
2. Jane Campion, her treatment of women’s themes? Adapting the novel? With the assistance of the novelist?
3. New York City, apartments, clubs, police precincts? The cityscapes? The climax at the lighthouse? Its sexual and phallic symbolism?
4. The use of colour, real and surreal, bright and garish? The effect? The world that it created? And the contribution of the musical score?
5. The introduction to the film through Pauline, the red dress, her behaviour, sexuality, attitudes, at the club, her apartment, her work, her talk? Half-sister to Fran? Sharing with her, discussions, sexuality and frankness, her stalking of the doctor, the restraining order, her sudden death, the brutality, her head wrapped, the effect on Fran?
6. Meg Ryan as Fran, a frank role, exposing Meg Ryan physically and psychologically? The focus on the body? Emotions? Her lifestyle, relationship with Pauline and listening to her, sharing sexual discussions, her age, her teaching and love of language, poetry, in the subway, collecting quotations and words, teaching Virginia Woolf? Her classes, her students? Cornelius and his friendship, her meeting him in the bar, his thesis on Gacey and discussions about him? The attraction? Going to the restroom, seeing the fellatio. The tattoo on the hand? Her being fascinated, tempted, the first encounter with the detective, interrogations, the information about the murder? Her suspecting him of being in the bar, his tatoo? The attraction, the sexual sequences, sensuality, the aftermath and his reaction, thanking her? The trip to the forest and the water? Staying with Pauline, above the club, the detective’s assistant, his being drunk, his comments, the apology? Her life, trying to cope, the death of Pauline, the suspicions of the detective?
7. Her love of words, the subway poems, jotting them down, Dante’s forest?
8. Missing Pauline, the discovery of her body, the forensic visual detail?
9. The doctor, the past relationship, his phone calls, the visits, being at home at her place, having the shower, his odd behaviour? Talking about Pauline? His being suspicious?
10. The serial killings, the murders, the descriptions, the women? The investigations?
11. The detective, the relationship with him, her fear of him, the handcuffs and leaving him?
12. The detective’s assistant, reassuring Fran, driving her, going to the lighthouse, the revelation, his talk, his threats, his mental illness, the confrontation and Fran getting free? His death, Fran returning to help the detective?
13. The picture of women, the portrait of Fran, of Pauline, the women who danced topless in the bar? The contrast with the treatment of the men, in themselves, in the context of murder and detection? The detective, his assistant, the doctor, Cornelius?
14. The character of Cornelius, his studies, admiration of Fran, misinterpreting her advances, his work, visiting her?
15. The divided critical response to the film, women and their favourable response and empathy with the characters and situations, men and their criticisms of hesitations?

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