Saturday 30 May 2009

In the Cut [2003]


If you ever want to witness an archetypal example of an actor/actress playing against type, watch this erotic thriller by Jane Campion. Meg Ryan, forever typecast as the cute girl next door in such enormously popular romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail and French Kiss, shed her clean girl image and inhibitions in this dark atmospheric cat-and-mouse tale set in New York, starring as a beautiful English teacher who gets entangled in a relationship with a mysterious homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) investigating a series of brutal murders in her neighbourhood. The forty-something Meg Ryan didn’t just bare her luscious ageless body in the graphic nude scenes, but also her soul in her bravura turn as a severely lonely, emotionally fragile woman who experiences sexual liberation for the first time in her life during her torrid affair with a younger man, amid the suspicion, squalor and violence in her surroundings. The tone of this moody thriller might appear ambiguous for many, the characterization of Ruffalo’s cop not chiseled very well, and the constant blurring in and out of images a tad irritating, but superb turns by the two leads and the digressive narration of an otherwise straightforward plot managed to make for an interesting viewing.








Director: Jane Campion
Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Detective Movie/Mystery/Erotic Thriller
Language: English
Country: US

2 comments:

sitenoise said...

I never watched this because I thought it was "Flesh and Bone" and I'd already seen it. This is Jane Campion. I'm gonna look for this, and take average expectations with me.

Shubhajit said...

Yeah, it was interesting to see Meg Ryan in a different avatar altogether. That in itself was worth the watch. She was great to look at - and not just because of her good performance ;)