In the Cut (2004, DVD)

In the Cut made its way into and out of theatres rather quickly, what little attention it managed to garner owing mostly to Meg Ryan's bravura turn away from America's rom-com sweetheart and decidedly towards full-frontal nudity. Give that a good many people doubted Ms. Ryan could be any kind of a serious actress - and in a Jane Campion film no less - and that many men have been wondering what she looks like completely naked since her "orgasm in the diner" scene from When Harry Met Sally, it seems In the Cut would've made more of an impression at the box office. That it didn't, with such a built-in curiosity factor, would seem to point towards it being a horrible film, but it's not really. While Susanna Moore's 1995 novel (upon which this is based) is undoubtedly better, the film itself is rather decent, in its own way.

Franny (Ryan) is stuck in the rather intellectually satisfying by emotionally and sexually dead life that she has created for herself. A literature teacher, she is obsessed with words, with language and power. She is writing a book about ghetto slang and, while interviewing a student of hers in a bar one afternoon, she oversees a sexual encounter between a woman and a faceless man with a tattoo on his wrist in the back room. The next day, the same woman is found dead, her decapitated body dumped partly in the garden behind Franny's apartment complex. Soon, she is visited by Detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo, also playing much against type), the uber-masculine tough guy cop who has been assigned to the murder case. And who also has the exact same tattoo as the man Franny saw in the bar the night before.

Those looking for a thriller or whodunnit film are, at this point, advised to remember that this will not be that kind of film. In fact, if those type of genre films are your particular cup of tea, you're probably going to hate In the Cut. Because, despite seeming to head down familiar genre roads in its first half hour, this film could ultimately care less about who, in fact, done it. Jane Campion, who adapted (along with author Moore) and directed the film isn't at all interested in making that type of film. Any one at all familiar with her previous work (Sweetie, The Piano, Holy Smoke) shouldn't be all that surprised by this; Campion, after all, has yet to make a truly straight forward film to date. For, in her world, atmosphere, mood, and feeling are often far more important than getting the audience from Point A to Point B. Therein would most likely lie the explanation for this film's rather massive failure when released earlier this year.

This film does have problems, to be sure. It is often far too arty for its own good, as if a swiveling camera will somehow make painfully obvious scenes inherently deep and important. Also grating, at times, is the soundtrack itself - which starts with a marvelously discordant (and appropriate) "Que Sera, Sera" before sliding off track into banality and repetition. At times, it's as if everything around Meg Ryan is conspiring to overshadow her rather bold performance and render it helplessly stuck in a pretentious and not particularly noteworthy film. Still, Ryan's performance is strong enough for me to recommend the film, and not because she took off her clothes but rather because she actually took chances as an actress for the first time in a long time, actually taking on the part as opposed to relying on the shock value of "Meg Ryan being in a film like this" to raise her respectability on its own. It's truly unlike anything she has ever done on screen, and one has to give her due credit for the performance.

Ruffalo is good as well, as is Jennifer Jason Leigh (as Franny's troubled sister), and there are moments that work incredibly well in In the Cut. Unforunately, there are moments which just don't, and the film as a whole drags needlessly on to the two hour mark, when 90 minutes would have more than sufficed. This is by no means a great film, but it is perhaps one worth watching if there is nothing else available. You know, because Meg Ryan is naked in it and all.