Jane Campion is what you'd get if Andrea Dworkin became what Esquire magazine called a "Do-Me Feminist." On the one hand, all sex is inherently coercive in Campion's movies , with men in positions of power and women succumbing, but that's when Campion's inner Camille Paglia takes over. Holly Hunter really LIKES being coerced to have sex with Harvey Keitel in order to "earn" her piano back in The Piano. Kate Winslet really LIKES being seduced by her cult deprogrammer (Harvey Keitel again) in Holy Smoke, no matter how unethical it is. I suppose we should be thankful that Campion was kind enough to cast Mark Ruffalo in the Coercive Seducer role this time, because watching Meg Ryan not only travel as far away from typecasting as possible, but have to fuck Harvey Keitel in the bargain, is more than this critic could bear, and would have sent me screaming to the nearest New World Coffee.

Here, the coercive seducer is Mark Ruffalo as Detective Giovanni Malloy, a homicide detective who becomes embroiled with Frannie Avery (Meg Ryan, in her much-hyped departure from typecasting) after the latter witnesses a murder. Frannie is the anti-Carrie Bradshaw; a single woman in her thirties who teaches English literature to apathetic high school students, lives in a rather squalid, indifferently-furnished apartment that's cluttered with junk and poetry snippets and is located in a sinister-looking neighborhood. When we meet Frannie, we're immediately aware from her frumpy clothes, flat shoes, and blunt haircut, that she has Given Up On Love. Carrie Bradshaw obsesses about Chris Noth's urbane tycoon Mr. Big; Frannie obsesses about Malloy, a vulgar, uneducated brute of a man who just happens to fuck like a stallion -- but who may be a murderer. She's the logical descendent of Diane Keaton's character in Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

When you've been America's Sweetheart for fifteen years, you're going to have to do something drastic when you hit 40, because there's nothing less adorable than a 40-year-old who's still trying to be adorable. The heck with the nudity and the willingness to be photographed with her rump in the air and Mark Ruffalo's face in her crotch; give Meg Ryan credit for appearing on screen seemingly without makeup and certainly sans mascara, so that she looks, well, like Meg Ryan's somewhat fucked-out older sister, for all that she still has the body and perky breasts of an eighteen-year-old.

Much of the buzz about this film has to do not just with casting Meg Ryan against type, but also with the raw sexuality that is rarely seen in American films in recent years. I saw IN THE CUT a few days after seeing Julio Medem's dreamlike Sex and Lucia on DVD, and I'm always struck at how much more comfortable European directors, even male directors, are with integrating sexuality into a story. As provocative a director as Jane Campion seems to think she is, the sex in IN THE CUT, as in most American films, doesn't so much flow with the story as interrupt it: "Look! Here's the dirty part!" Medem's film gives both male and female nudity and sexuality equal time, and frames it in the context of the early, intense phase of an evolving relationship. Campion, for all that she thinks this depiction is brave and fearless, still bathes the encounter in shame. That it takes place between two such obviously dysfunctional characters -- a chronically depressed woman and a cop who has seen so much that sex has become merely "a nice time" -- against a backdrop of a tawdry, slapped-together apartment in a tawdry, slapped-together neighborhood, removes any eroticism this encounter might have. This is sex played for shock value rather than eroticism, but the only shock value here is a brief glimpse of le Ruffalette, before the actor covers himself discreetly with a sheet.

What everyone really wants to know about IN THE CUT is this: Is Meg Ryan any good? The answer is a qualified yes. With something that looks like it came from Hope Davis' wigmaker for American Splendor on her head, a slumped walk, weary demeanor, and deeper-than-we're-accustomed-to voice, Ryan manages to reasonably effectively channel Nicole Kidman, who was originally cast in the role. She looks like Nicole Kidman, she sounds like Nicole Kidman, and to that extent, and to the extent that she manages to get through this film without embarrassing herself, it's a successful transition.

It helps that she's backed up by some decent supporting work. Mark Ruffalo's hooded eyes and soft, smoky voice ought to have made him an instant sex symbol, except that he's just a wee bit TOO dangerous, with a kind of coiled rage that seems ready to explode any minute. This of course makes him perfect for this role. Bulkier in the body than he was as the soulful, if irresponsible Terry in You Can Count On Me, with just the right tinge of Noo Yawk in his speech, he inhabits this character from his first scene, even if he never quite convinced me that he could be the killer.

Jennifer Jason Leigh reprises her now trademark Hopeless Fuckup role as Frannie's half-sister Pauline, another woman dumb enough to get involved with unavailable or unsuitable men. As if Pauline's slurred speech, dumpy-looking body stuffed into what looks like one of Carrie Bradshaw's old dresses, and disastrous love life didn't clue us in, the fact that she lives above a strip club and has the local pimp as an impromptu doorman ought to. Sharrieff Pugh does some very nice work as a student Frannie tutors who empathizes with serial killer John Wayne Gacy, even if his character seems to be in this film only to give us the obligatory black guy to suspect is the killer. And Kevin Bacon appears as a brief flame of Frannie's, now given to merely stalking her. Bacon makes this small role far more fun than anything else in the film, as he careens between quirky tics and dangerous insanity. It's the kind of role he seems to have taken on merely in the service of the ongoing "Six Degrees" game. Indeed, ALL of the men in this film are potential suspects.

For all that Jane Campion has cinematographer Dion Beebe (whose work was most recently seen in Chicago) on the case this time, the New York of IN THE CUT isn't the glowing jewel of Sex and the City; if anything, it's the Kafkaesque nightmare of Martin Scorsese's After Hours. There's a brown-and-red wash evident throughout the film, and every block seems more sinister than the one before. All the men are potential suspects, and the very scenery foreshadows impending doom. A flashback to a Victorian-tinged scene of Franny's fantasy about her parents' courtship devolves into a nightmare of dismemberment. Mournful subway scenes of an anxious bride and of two men carrying a huge heart-shaped funereal floral arrangement labeled "Mom" are juxtaposed against Franny enthralled with poetry laden with sexual imagery as a subway train careens through a tunnel. Get it?. No one ever accused Jane Campion of subtlety, and here she lays it on with a trowel. Frannie's use of a story about a lighthouse at the beginning of the film foreshadows the film's ending. A student's comments about how it takes three dead ladies for a story to be interesting are ominous. A cat leaping up onto a stoop in front of a neon sign that reads "Psychic Readings" to dine on something indeterminate. Carly's song "You're No Good" plays in the background of the pub where Malloy's attempted seduction of Franny takes place.

IN THE CUT is a suspense thriller with only a limited amount of suspense. I had the perp pegged by mid-film, but then, I got the secret of The Others at about the same point, which really says nothing other than that I spend too much time watching movies. That said, I certainly hated IN THE CUT far less than I've hated Campion's other films, though her relentless obsession with Women Want Rape is as disturbing as ever. If you enjoy watching train wrecks, or if you want to watch Meg Ryan humiliated, perhaps as punishment for too many romantic comedies, this just might be your cup of tea.

-- Jill Cozzi

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