By Johnny Donaldson

Collegian Staff

In The Cut

Directed by Jane Campion

Starring Meg Ryan Mark Ruffalo

Screen Gems

Rated R

119 Mins

Grade: F

Meg Ryan gets naked in Jane Campion’s new thriller “In The Cut” – I mean she really gets stark raving nude. She is far from the perky, button-nosed romantic comedy princess that so many viewers are accustomed to seeing her as; there will be no Tom Hanks sweeping her off her feet with a dozen roses. Ryan’s new reinvention as a brazen sex queen as earned many a notice amongst the press – hardly an article goes by without mentioning that Ryan is nude and having a lot of sex in the movie – yet no one bothers to mention the other major component of her performance.

That is the fact the Ryan seems to spend the entirety of the movie in a mopey, drugged-out daze. Ryan drifts through as if she’s in a foggy haze, never even registering that she’s stuck in an inert and ludicrous thriller. Her face is benumbed, her emotions are stunted – even her body language seems oddly languorous and methodical. She’s acting in a vacuum, as a vacuum – sucking every bit of life out of the film.

If Ryan seems to be on Quaaludes, so does the movie. This languid, torpid movie is slow, dull and unbearably boring. A long, plodding slog through heavy-handed symbolism that all but beats itself over the head of the viewer, the movie is an endless loop of torture that seems to just get longer with every second that ticks away from the clock.

“In The Cut” is an erotic thriller that is noticeably devoid of eroticism and thrills. Since it is neither sexy nor scary, it has no reason to be and so exists as a monument to the mighty of self-importance of those behind this conceited crock. Campion seems to want to make a highly sexualized suspense story and a movie that transcends the limitations of her chosen genre. But she has no respect for the genre and her disdain and pompous narcissism leads to a movie that is nothing more than a high-toned arthouse version of the softcore schlock that often plays on late-night Cinemax.

This is “The Hulk” of softcore porn – a movie that takes a limited genre and tries, through literary and cinematic pretension, to make it mean something …only to fail utterly and miserably. This isn’t art, but gassy and affected crap, and “In The Cut” is even more morose and dreadful than Ang Lee’s lugubrious “Hulk.” The movie plays like it is torn between down and dirty lurid thrills – there are dismembered corpses and naked entwined limbs – and being a doctoral thesis on feminist sexual theory. “In The Cut” ends up entombed in its airless “gravity.”

Ryan plays Frannie Avery, a New York English teacher who falls into a passionate affair with Malloy (Mark Ruffalo), a police detective investigating the brutal murder of a young woman whose head was found beneath Frannie’s apartment window. Frannie is a lover of slang and a collector of words, and her interest is piqued when Malloy uses the term “de-articulated” to describe the state of the victim. Further intriguing Frannie is the fact that Malloy is the kind of man who can use a crude and vulgar line on a girl and still be able to sweep her off her feet; he knows how to walk the line between lewdness and charm.

Frannie and Malloy fall into bed and soon Frannie begins to suspect that Malloy is the killer prowling the city streets. (He has the same tattoo as the faceless man whom Frannie saw getting fellatio in the shadowy corners of a bar; the victim has the same blue fingernails as the woman performing her, uh, art.) But is Malloy the killer? Or is it his obnoxious partner (Nick Damici), Frannie’s hot-tempered black student (Sharrieff Pugh) or her creepy, obsessive ex-boyfriend (Kevin Bacon, strangely – and wisely – going unbilled.)

“In The Cut,” which was adapted from the novel by Susannah Moore, offers a startlingly shallow pool of potential victims, allowing for an easier (too easy) chance at guessing the identity of the killer. In fact, “In the Cut” offers up a city that is empty of people; the bustling metropolis of New York City has been turned alien and lifeless. It’s the perfect hollow setting for a movie that is deadened from the opening credits onward.

Dion Beebe’s cinematography goes for a dreamy, wavering feel, but the jostling, restless camerawork is in desperate need of Dramamine. The camera never ceases to stop moving, drunkenly hobbling around without a steady gaze, and the edges blur and fuzz and grow indistinct. It’s like watching the movie through a lens smeared in jelly. Obviously, Campion and Beebe were going for an effect reminiscent of the heroine’s tremulous, unsteady nature, but they just create the atmosphere of an upset stomach.

Frannie likes to spend her time on the subway reading little snippets of poetry-painted posters decorating the walls. It’s the kind of two-ton symbolism that helps to crush the air out of the movie. Campion suffocates the viewer with her so-called “meaningfulness,” the way that her variation on the sex thriller is meant to say something deep and significant. But there’s no center to her movie and “In the Cut” comes across as a dour, misguided and portentous bore. Ryan is far too glum and maddeningly passive to make for a sympathetic heroine – face it, this limp noodle is an annoying doormat – and Ruffalo fails to give his character any shading or interest; Malloy comes off as creepy even when he’s meant to be charming. This pathetic attempt at an erotic thriller is as erotic as a cold shower.