In the Cut **** (2003, Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, Jenifer Jason Leigh, Kevin Bacon) – Classic Movie Review 5231

Meg Ryan throws off her nicey-nice image to play Frannie Avery, a a New York City inner city high school English teacher involved with a serial killer, and the NYPD homicide detective, Giovanni Malloy (Mark Ruffalo), hunting him. As the tense, uptight murder suspect and the sweaty cop on the case, Ryan and Ruffalo are both superb in co-writer/ director Jane Campion’s searing, haunting, highly provocative, marvellously crafted movie.

With its grainy, gritty, hand-held camerawork, it gives an impressive taste of lowish-life New York, and it works well as an erotic thriller, even if more suspects would help the mystery. However, it is actually on the case of emotional and sexual truths, and delivers on this front too.

With its shocking explicit sex scenes, Jane Campion’s clever 2003 erotic thriller pushes the envelope of mainstream movie-making, caring more for its characters, motives and situations than its predictable tale. Ryan and Ruffalo give it their all. Jenifer Jason Leigh does not really have enough to do as Ryan’s paternal half sister Pauline, and an unbilled Kevin Bacon is playing what is too obviously a red herring character to make much sense.

Nevertheless, it will have you discussing it for days afterwards.

The erect penis is a first in a US mainstream movie.

The film was intended for Nicole Kidman, who did Dogville instead, but produces. Susanna Moore co-writes the screenplay from her bestselling novel.

Also in the cast are Nick Damici, Sharrieff Pugh, Michael Nuccio, Alison Nega, Dominick Aries, Susan Gardner and Heather Litteer.

This is an adult film with strong sexuality, explicit dialogue, nudity, graphic crime scenes and strong language.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5231

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com