Anne Marie's Women's Pictures continues with her month-long look at the films of Jane Campion.
Before you look at me askance for choosing the 2003 film In the Cut for this week’s Jane Campion movie, let me share a smattering of the comments people have made at TFE and on Facebook about it:
“if you're going to cover 5 of her 7 films anyway, why not tackle the absolute worst of the lot?”
“fyi don't listen to anyone who says IN THE CUT is a bad movie. it's fantastic & worth finding.”
“I don't like In the Cut but as far as failures go, it's definitely one of the more interesting/intriguing ones.”
“IN THE CUT is one of my very very very very favorites of ever in everdom.”
With such wildly varied responses, my interest was piqued. And now, having watched In the Cut twice, I must say: everyone is right. It’s a terrible thriller. It’s also a fascinating meditation on the complicated, kinky relationship between sex and violence, told from a woman’s perspective. It is the simultaneously the most and least Campion-like film we’ve watched this month. In The Cut is a messy, ugly, beautiful contradiction.
It also has naked Mark Ruffalo. You're welcome.
Lit Professor Frannie Avery (Meg Ryan in an un-Ryan role) is the typical Campion heroine we’ve grown to love: fiercely intelligent, observant, headstrong, and independent. After a woman is found dismembered under her window, Frannie falls into lust with a flirtatious detective (Mark Ruffalo) who she suspects is the murderer. The body count rises along with Frannie’s passion, and the increasingly-tangled story ensnares her sex-obsessed sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a serial-killer-obsessed student (Sharrieff Pugh), and Frannie’s obsessive, possessive ex-boyfriend (Kevin Bacon).
A thriller is not the kind of genre in which a reflective director like Jane Campion excels. In past films, Campion has focused on character studies and powerful images. Plot was secondary. Instead, Campion used plot as the skeleton on which to hang the meat of her movie: necessary for structure, but hidden behind tonal shifts, visual beats, and character moments. However, this meditative mood is ill-suited to a thriller, which requires that the audience be present, aware, and anticipating each twist. That’s what makes In the Cut a poor thriller: though dark in its visual style - I forgot how obsessed the early aughts were with amber filters and handheld cameras - In the Cut retains that un-thriller-like contemplative Campion mode. The camera stays close to Frannie’s point of view as she reads quotes on subway ads, studies shadowed faces and wrist tattoos, and falls into Detective Malloy’s seduction.
That seduction scene operates as a kind of thesis for the movie’s themes on passion and violence. After Frannie is mugged, she calls the detective to her home. He wraps his arm around her neck, and they both pause in the heat of the moment. They don’t pause for long. Their relationship is as violent as this playacted mugging - Frannie’s appetite for the detective is tied to her suspicion that he’s the killer. Detective Malloy whispers cruel things to Frannie - this is not the Rom Com Ruffalo - and it turns her on more. Campion doesn’t pass judgement on her characters for their kinks. But in her hunt for the killer, Frannie is surrounded by the bodies of women who took similar risks on an unknown man, and those women wound up sashimi. Unfortunately, in the third act, the plot comes rushing to the foreground in a confused tangle, and Campion’s point is buried under a pile of genre cliches.
I’ve now reached my word limit, with so much more to unravel about this film. Maybe that’s the greatest takeaway from In the Cut - to dismiss it as merely “bad” is to miss seeing a Jane Campion film with the stitches exposed. Even though Campion (and producer Nicole Kidman, who dropped out of the starring role) spent 5 years trying to make In the Cut, it feels unfinished. Themes drop in and out of importance, secondary characters read powerfully or flat, even the camera vacillates between Very Campion (as with the deep shadows) and Un-Campion (as with the shaky camera). Without the polish of The Piano or Bright Star, In the Cut is a raw, emotional, flawed film that says something strong about violence and women. I’m still not quite sure what it is.
Next week on Women's Pictures:
4/30 - Bright Star (2009) - Join us for the Hit Me With Your Best Shot crossover with Campion's latest feature about poet John Keats. This is going to be a tough one to choose just one shot for. (Amazon Instant Video)