In The Cut 2003

Rough, raw and harsh New York City serial killer movie that is based on a serious novel by Susanna Moore who also collaborated on the screenplay with the director Jane Campion. The film was slashed to ribbons (sorry couldn’t resist) by most of the critics, but David Thomson called it a “masterpiece” and “one of the great films of the Twenty-First Century”.  Yes there are a lot of cracks in this rock where the water gets in. However I think this is a film of value for many reasons including some important issues that women fear and deal with all the time, Yes its a thriller and is filled to the top with sex and eroticism that is mixed up with a series of horrible murders of vulnerable women and the rush to find the killer, we’ve seen this story many times before.

However I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a disturbing thriller nightmare made by a woman director, and a major one at that. There are a few other harsh thrillers by women directors that immediately come to mind including Kathryn Bigelow’s “Blue Steel”, Catherine Breillat’s “Fat Girl” and Mary Harron’s “American Psycho.” Campion is a miniaturist in her details both visual and plots, and her films usually brim to the top with startling and unexpected images, and off the cuff characters “In The Cut” has its fill of  all of these elements. Campion’s New York City is ugly, dirty and cramped, this is no “Sex and The City”. It’s noisy and dangerous.  The two main female characters are a mousy low energy English college professor played very well by an unexpected Meg Ryan who seems to be sleepwalking through her teaching and is more interested in her dream of writing a book on slang. The title “In The Cut” might be slang for female genitalia as well as a reference to what the movie’s serial killer likes to do to his victims. The other young woman is her opposite in everything especially in lavish sex appeal and her appearance, this is her half sister acted by Jennifer Jason Leigh. They have a close bond, and both live in lousy ugly apartments on the lower eastside just around the corner from the lower depths of life. Much of the film is far fetched (aren’t most thrillers?) rash and rushed, but it does hold one’s attention, at least it did mine. Into the mix comes police detective Mark Ruffalo with a nice mustache and lots of sexual self-assurance along with his sexist and homophobic outlook on life. He’s on the make for Ryan and the killer and before long they are having an intense sexual relationship in between his interrogating her. It seems she saw one of the victims having sex with someone who might be the killer. This seen sex act is very explicit in the unrated version but is R rated on the one streaming on Netflix and it is unseen. I’ve seen them both. Also in the cast lurking and stalking is an uncredited  Kevin Bacon (I never realized how tall he is), an unseen mugger, Ruffalo’s troubled partner, and the city itself. The sex is more explicit than the violence.