Re-examining the challenging eroticism of In the… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Re-exam­in­ing the chal­leng­ing eroti­cism of In the Cut

30 Apr 2018

Words by Justine Smith

Two people sitting at a bar, engaged in conversation, with warm, colourful lighting.
Two people sitting at a bar, engaged in conversation, with warm, colourful lighting.
Jane Campion’s much maligned 2003 thriller offers a vital sub­ver­sion of the male gaze.

When Jane Campion’s In the Cut was released in 2003, much of the crit­i­cal dis­course was absorbed with Meg Ryan. She was not the bright and sun­ny rom-com star they’d come to love, but an old­er and com­pli­cat­ed woman embroiled in a dreamy erot­ic thriller. She took her clothes off for this?” Tom Long scoffed for the Detroit News, echo­ing a prud­ish­ness in the film’s recep­tion. Dis­mayed by this unfa­mil­iar star and the film’s sub­ver­sion of the male gaze, most reviews pub­lished at the time were neg­a­tive and dis­mis­sive. Of all of Campion’s films, how­ev­er, this is arguably the one most in need of a re-evaluation.

Meg Ryan plays Fran­nie, an Eng­lish teacher who stum­bles on the young woman giv­ing a mys­tery man a blowjob in a bar base­ment: the next day that girl will be found butchered. Stub­born and lust­ful, Fran­nie strikes up a heat­ed sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with the inves­ti­gat­ing cop, Mal­loy (Mark Ruf­fa­lo), as she starts to feel she might be the future vic­tim of a lurk­ing ser­i­al killer.

Rat­ed R in the US, the wide­ly avail­able DVD fea­tures a few shots cut from the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal ver­sion, includ­ing a very real­is­tic erect penis that Cam­pi­on insists isn’t real but has a remark­able verisimil­i­tude. As the blowjob scene is the impe­tus to the film’s action and tone, down­play­ing its shock­ing charge would rob the film of its pow­er. It is a film about phys­i­cal obses­sions and this sequence forges the unspo­ken bond between this unseen man and Fran­nie, as he brush­es away the hair of the young girl so that Fran­nie can have a bet­ter look, lock­ing them in an elic­it partnership.

The inten­si­ty of this inter­ac­tion feeds into the atmos­phere of the rest of the film and has a desta­bil­is­ing effect on Fran­nie, who becomes increas­ing­ly unsure about her mem­o­ry. The erot­ic sen­sa­tion that springs from this moment is so pow­er­ful that it bleeds into all aspects of her life. Her lust rever­ber­ates through her wak­ing moments and dreams until her mem­o­ries are poi­soned by her pri­mal desire; ruined and unre­li­able. Eroti­cism, like a dream, exists in a frag­ment­ed form and just as the more you try and piece togeth­er a dream, the hard­er it is to grasp, the details of sex fol­low a sim­i­lar pat­tern. As the details come togeth­er Fran­nie is no longer sure if this is as it hap­pened, or if her imag­i­na­tion is fill­ing in lit­tle gaps. Sex works sim­i­lar­ly, break­ing down bod­ies and sen­sa­tions into these expe­ri­en­tial flash­es: In the Cut oper­ates on that level.

Dur­ing their first meet­ing, Fran­nie and Mal­loy dis­cuss the victim’s body par­tial­ly buried in her front yard. The killer dis­ar­tic­u­lat­ed”, the woman he says and the sharp­ness of how he pro­nounces the c” cuts through the room and the strong walls she’s built up. She repeats the word and fix­ates on it. At this moment the seed of her obses­sion was plant­ed, as a ver­bal ges­ture with no rhyme or rea­son cap­tures the minu­ti­ae of sex­u­al longing.

When they meet again on the street, Mal­loy is talk­ing to a perp on the street when he flags her down. He’s smok­ing a cig­a­rette and talk­ing fast with­out say­ing very much. His ges­tures are impul­sive but grace­ful. He puts his cig­a­rette to his mouth with one hand, takes a puff, and tak­ing it in his oth­er hand, he opens up a car door for her to enter. They haven’t even touched and we under­stand that his body has already reached beyond his phys­i­cal form, as Fran­nie fix­ates on his every ges­ture. Even as he leaves, his pres­ence is still felt as if the sheer force of her lust has made him the cen­tre of the uni­verse and every­thing else is just orbit­ing around him.

The pair even­tu­al­ly have sex in her apart­ment. She’s wear­ing a bor­rowed dress and has just been attacked on the street by a man she believes might be a killer. He goes down on her, gen­tly. I’ll be every­thing you want me to be, the only thing I won’t do is beat you up,” he tells her in the pre­vi­ous scene, a line which rever­ber­ates in their inti­ma­cy. As her back arch­es, the gold-dark room feels warm, almost womb­like. From the fog of orgasm, she tries to make sense of her plea­sure, ask­ing him to teach her. The moment, though not ruined, starts to fade and becomes less real the more they talk.

Frannie’s lust deep­ens, but so does her para­noia as the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Mal­loy and the imag­ined killer start to add up in her mind. This is the real tragedy of the film – that as her erot­ic world opens so does the pos­si­bil­i­ty of step­ping into a night­mare. On the one hand, the bur­dens of com­mit­ment and expec­ta­tions to mar­ry and have chil­dren weigh on her; con­verse­ly, explor­ing her sex­u­al fan­tasies mean a nego­ti­a­tion between her desire and the vio­lence of men.

When Cam­pi­on sold the film to investors, she pitched it as a ser­i­al killer mys­tery in the vein of David Fincher’s Se7en. Today she acknowl­edges how much of a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion that was, as the film is not so much about the mur­der as it is about the thoughts and expe­ri­ences of being a woman in the mod­ern world and the vio­lence of men, even those who are sup­posed to pro­tect you, is a part of it. In the Cut might be one of Campion’s most maligned works, but it is also one of her most fas­ci­nat­ing – a tense erot­ic thriller that’s well worth a sec­ond look.

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