In the Cut

A murder thriller wrapped up in a melancholic mood. Jane Campion has a troubled soul and likes to exorcise her demons through cinematic images. But she shouldn’t get into things she is unfamiliar with. From the thriller perspective, the plot moves forward terribly slowly; the film is thus boring, predictable and, in its surprising ending, more naïve than shocking and suspenseful. And that controversial close-up of a blow job in the opening scene exists only so people will talk about it. (11/20/2003)

A well shot dreadful screenplay. The two distinct and notably discordant halves can't be linked together either by a crucial twist that kicks off the final chaos, nor by the desperately bewildered Meg Ryan. The overly long exchanges do not help you understand the characters, and the flashy flashbacks might blunt the boredom, but in the end, they remain mere empty inserts. The erotically inclined storyline of Frannie's personal life then irritates you with its openness, which instead of aiding the story, buries it under layers of lascivious and unfortunately occasionally ridiculous scenes. The biggest problem, however, is when lofty phrases appear in the dialogue or the monologues, which the heroes simply squander emptily. It's a shame for the unpredictable Mark Ruffalo, who doesn't deserve to have a movie like this in his filmography; the rest remains a pitiful, albeit occasionally striving, false start. (08/31/2007)

Visually, it’s very well done (camera, editing, flashbacks, fast-paced scenes), but the director struggled with the content, resulting in a bland genre mix that might be enjoyable, but it probably won't last in memory longer than a few hours. For a shocking women's drama, it lacks more dramatic moments, for a thriller, a better screenplay, and as an erotic film, it probably wouldn't hold up either. It did have a really suffocating atmosphere, Meg Ryan was very daring, but she could have jumped upside-down and it wouldn't have changed the quality of the film. (08/09/2004)