FILM MARCH 1, 2012
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In the Cut is not a new film, but many of you won’t have seen it, and some who saw it when it opened in 2003, amid critical abuse, should think of seeing it again. Then it may become new, beautiful and very disturbing. So, in the wake of the annual hysteria over our current movies, let me recall an “old” masterpiece, all the more resonant in that it was largely missed by the people whose business it is to guide us in what to see.
Frannie lives in New York where she teaches English at a run-down college. She is good-looking, but she is forty-two; or whatever age Meg Ryan was when she played the part. Going to the bathroom in a bar she discovers a woman giving head to a man. Frannie cannot see his face, but the man knows she is watching and he might guess that Frannie has noticed the tattoo on his arm. Later a woman is found dead, murdered and cut up; the head is in Frannie’s garden. It seems to be the woman she saw in the bathroom. A police detective (Mark Ruffalo) comes to call, and an instant combative attraction forms between him and Frannie, though he has a tattoo as well.
Frannie is a woman alone (save for her half-sister who lives nearby), experienced yet vulnerable. She reads the poems put up in subway cars and she is lonely. But she is brave and a gambler, like her sister who lives in an apartment above a striptease joint. Sometimes Frannie masturbates, and as she develops an affair with the detective she is treading on dangerous ground: The sexual satisfaction—seen and felt in authentically erotic sequences—does not soften the detective or make him less of a suspect in Frannie’s mind.
It’s important to know that this is a film made by women. Jane Campion directed it, from a novel by Susannah Moore, and the film was produced by Nicole Kidman, who was originally set to play Frannie. For some time, Campion, Moore, and Kidman worked on the script together, but then late in the day Kidman dropped out and Meg Ryan was hired in her place. I have no doubt that Kidman would have been very good in the part, but it belongs to Ryan now, and you feel she has a sadder, more battered, less wide-eyed or confident gaze than Kidman. You believe the sex matters to Ryan, in ways she can’t articulate, and you attribute her nakedness to a kind of unguarded or candid sensuality, a fatalism, and a lack of ego or any pretense at glamour. It is a power that does not frighten her, and she is not afraid to show it to the detective. Her body is exceptional, but Ryan looks her age, and Kidman has sometimes resisted that implacable pressure.
This personal commentary is valid because Meg Ryan is not simply an actress playing a part, she is a fundamental, authorial presence and sensibility for the movie. More than that, it’s as if Jane Campion has found ways of filming that emanate from that sensibility. It’s a film of endangered intimacy, close-ups shot from a distance, with a good deal of the frame out of focus. Soft focus sometimes equals vanity and sentimentality, but in this case it represents Frannie’s awareness and her feelings. It has an emotional quality that blooms in the love-making scenes, the frankness of which never seems ostentatious or titillating.
The film does depart from the novel in its ending, and I can live with that because Moore’s stunning conclusion could not be handled on the screen without a distracting sensationalism. The ending that Campion uses is more merciful and it may offer comfort or hope, if that’s how you want to read it. But the film is true to the core of the novel and its rare grasp of a woman who is afraid and reckless at the same time. What adds to the novel is Campion’s persistent use of red and green in the movie. The red is blood, of course, as well as the clothes people wear—Frannie and her half sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh) have red dresses. The green is the garden mentioned earlier, and it is a pervasive interior light that can fall on hair and skin as well as walls painted green. The design scheme may sound studied, but the coloration and the light of the film—its absinthe noir look—is married with the out-of-focus elements and the weary neediness in Ryan’s face.
As I said, Meg Ryan was forty-two when the film opened, and that is a delicate age for a movie actress. Whatever you think about In the Cut, you cannot miss the courage and resolution the actress showed in going for this un-Meg-Ryan-like material. And she was lambasted for that, just as she got little honor and no honors. Her career began to deteriorate: She has not worked much; a couple of projects went straight to video, another released movie did no business. The remake of The Women received dire reviews. So Meg Ryan is now fifty, and widely regarded as that nice girl next door (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail) who lost her sweetness.
Of course, she did well enough for over ten years, and there are many other good and deserving actresses who had far less opportunity. Still, it’s hard to look at In the Cut again and not feel badly for her and for our movies. She deserved better, just as you need to see this exceptional film. The final wounding irony is that if you look “Meg Ryan” up on the internet, you can watch the erotic scenes from In the Cut isolated and “FREE,” with this nudging caption on one website: “See Meg’s pegs and impressively pert forty-something caboose as she gets undressed and slides into bed with Mark Ruffalo. And look close in the middle of the scene—Sally shows Hairy.” There are other ways of looking closely.
David Thomson is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film and The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder.
8 comments
I suppose the careeer lesson for an actress is that it's okay to have a fake orgasm in a restaurant, but unforgiving to have a "real" one in bed. To his credit, Thomson doesn't compare Ryan to other actresses about her age, but I will: Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep. I pick those two because both have enjoyed "success" (lots of parts) but for very different reasons. As an actress, Keaton is, well, not in a class by herself. I remember watching Reds for the first time and barely being able to watch her scenes. The other night I watched Manhattan for the first time in many years and, well, there she was. I have the impression Keaton simply plays herself in all her roles; Allen's description of Keaton's character (given to his friend, who is Keaton's paramour, after first meeting and falling for her) is spot on Keaton. She does keep her clothes on, which is even used as a punch line in one of her recent movies with Jack Nicholson. Streep, on the other hand, has played some challenging roles, or at least the accents are challenging. Her characters are very much the opposite of Streep in real life (or the real life she projects in interviews): distant, often conflicted, introverted. And she keeps her clothes on. Streep is my favorite, Keaton not so much. Ryan? Don't really know because she took her clothes off and ended her career. That's the movies.
- rayward
February 29, 2012 at 8:45am
I find it fascinating that the fact that Meg Ryan destroyed her stunningly beautiful face with botched plastic surgery is not mentioned. There are two interesing elements if this being left out: the hackneyed, yet undeniable storyline of how pitiless Hollywood is to women writ large in tragic Meg's choice, and the subsequent affect this has had on our abiity to tolerate looking at her anymore. Meg Ryan's career did not evaoprate because she went nude. It crashed because we, as a culture, destroyed her and we know it.
- WandreyCer
February 29, 2012 at 9:38am
should read "writ large in Meg's tragic choice" (wish we had an edit function, I'd use it more than anyone I suspect).
- WandreyCer
February 29, 2012 at 9:42am
wandrey, I wouldn't say she looks so terrible, I have seen far worse plastic surgery jobs, but I agree that she has a pinched look that is not movie star appealing. But why are you blaming culture? She got the surgery. There are a host of actresses who have kept on working as they have gotten older. I agree that Hollywood is a bit harder on older women than older men, but what has Costner done lately? I don't want to knock plastic surgery altogether though, since there are a number of women who look fantastic because of it. Joan Rivers looks incredible. I am ashamed to admit I sometime watch the Fashion Police because she is so damn funny.
- blackton
February 29, 2012 at 10:19am
Black - take a close look at this review of her movie. I greatly admire David Thomson's work, have all of his books, devour anything he writes. I also agree with much of what he says in this review. And yet, the sexism in it is so endemic, so profound it is almost too big to see let alone comprehend. There's something so repellent about it, it makes me shiver, with its unending focus on her body and how exactly she's been sexually humilated on the internet - which takes up an odd amount of space for a movie review. And yet at the same time, its also an interesting and enlightening take, especially considering how women are viewed, valued, accessed and even perceived in Hollywood and therefore our culture. Can you sense the monstrous dehumanzition in this piece? Women do it too, we're all socialized in the same soup. Reading pieces like this and finding them interesting speaks to the sort of dual reality women live in. I think what I'm trying to do is pry our eye back a bit to take a macro look at reality. Why is it that Meg Ryan - one of the most beautiful creatures that has ever graced the screen - felt compelled to get surgery in the first place? Yes she chose to do it, no one walked her in to the door of that office and that counts as something to consider in this as well. What if it hadn't been botched? Would it still be compelling to me? But I still find it important to consider what drove her to do it as well. Look, life is shades of grey, no one is the bad guy here. I'm ashamed to say I catch myself judging women for having the gall to age in public too. A least I'm honest about it. Meryl Streep is a wonderful exception to the rule of Hollywood, bless her. Her talent overrode all comers, every nasty norm that waited for her. She's also blessed with confidence galore. But she's a Hope Diamond of a human being, there is no one else like her. We allowed her to age and she stepped in to it with gusto. And I'm afraid I disagree with you obvously, Meg Ryan's post-surgery face makes me want to look away and cringe. I'm not alone. I'm also sure that's what happened to her career.
- WandreyCer
February 29, 2012 at 11:16am
It's also worth noting that at least one item of the horrible plastic surgery was lip augmentation, which has nothing to do with avoiding the impact of aging. It's more like a nose job, changing how you look instead of trying to preserve what you started with. Also, I think one of the reasons Meryl Streep has been able to keep working is because she was never cast for her beauty to begin with. I think she's actually more attractive now than when she was younger but she has an odd nose and was never someone whose prime asset was her looks. The same thing is true for Glenn Close and Sigorney Weaver -- they were always attractive but not noted for being attractive as much as being good actresses. Contrast these women with Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange, two other actresses of roughly the same generation who nearly vanished from the scene when they began to age. Of course they are both very talented but because they were known for their beauty, they had a lot more trouble transitioning to older roles. It will be interesting to see how the current 40-something women (Julia Roberts, Hallie Berry, for example) handle the next phase of their careers -- and how they are treated by Hollywood.
- shellski
February 29, 2012 at 2:28pm
Interesting comments all the way around and especially between Jill and Blackton. As usual Jill makes good points and makes them passionately. I thought Meg Ryan was excellent in this or her atypical role and that she looked good in line with the character she portrayed and that she was sexy and sensual and erotic contributing to and mixing in win the movie's dark, dangerous atmosphere. I think it was courageous acting on her part the way Oprah Winfrey was courageous in Beloved and Marisa Tomei was in The Wrestler, exposing her body in playing a character whose body was past its prime, when her body was the means of her livelihood and in that sense basic to her personal identity. Just a few other points: I'd agree that any plastic surgery Meg Ryan got was her choice and that the culture in that sense is not to be blamed. Also I guess I missed the prevasive sexism in Thomson's review. My wife watched Joan Rivers on Fashion Police right after the academies for the first time ever. She'd say, as the kids say, LMAO.
- basman
February 29, 2012 at 2:48pm
I'm intrigued by Thomson's review. I saw the movie when it came out and I remember being both impressed and repelled. I thought it was because Meg Ryan was playing a role she was highly unsuited for. I must have resented it. But reading this review I'm realizing that what has lingered in my memory were exactly the scenes Thomson refers to. I'm also wondering if there is a case for comparing her character and her handling of it with Jane Fonda's character in "Klute", a film I revisited recently. They both portray extremely vulnerable women maintaining a facade of in your face confidence, looking for something they cannot quite describe in the context of sexual crime mystery. Also they both get involved with the detectives on the respective cases. I don't remember how "In the cut" ends.
- noga1
March 1, 2012 at 12:32pm