In director Jane Campion’s unbearably stylized “In The Cut,” Meg Ryan goes looking For Mr. Goodbar and, instead, discovers the wearisome progeny. Much ado has been made of her “courageous” performance, one for which she darkened her fair hair to match her character’s disposition and spends a great deal of time brooding in various stages of undress. It’s a willful play against type, but as Halle Berry demonstrated in “Monster’s Ball,” it takes more than tears and ta-tas to convincingly distance oneself from chronic cuddliness. Throughout the film, Ryan stumbles along in some sort of pseudo-stupor, made all the more conspicuous by the deliberately distorted visuals and pervasive murkiness that Campion employs to ill-effect. Fuzzy as it all is, one thing is crystal clear: This crime thriller fails, at every shadowy turn, to thrill.
Ryan plays Frannie, a preternaturally gloomy English teacher who likes abstract poetry and hanging around with creepy characters. Her half-sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a spaced-out strumpet who lives above a strip club and is a virtual lock to eventually cross paths with the knife-wielding maniac who is terrorizing the neighborhood. After a severed head is discovered in her garden, Frannie meets and soon drifts into bed with an enigmatic homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) who she comes to suspect may be the murderer. Or it could be her unbalanced ex-boyfriend (Kevin Bacon) or the hot-tempered student who delivers a blood-splattered term paper contending notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s innocence. Or maybe it’s the guy who sells flowers on the corner, or his dog Fido.
Thing is, it doesn’t seem to matter much to Frannie who’s killing everyone around her. You get the sense she’d just as soon be seduced as sliced up. And if she doesn’t care whodunit, why should we? (Rated R for strong sexuality including explicit dialogue, nudity, graphic crime scenes and language. Running time: 119 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 31, 2003. Read the original PDF.