Jane Campion’s In The Cut (2003) is an erotic thriller drenched in sepia tones that re-imagines its idiom as a distinctly feminine experience. The rampant misogyny that often dominates the erotic thriller genre is synthesized by Campion’s narrative process into a series of oppressive encounters with social and political institutions. The feminine, in terms of identity and gaze, exists around genre specific moments, breathing new life and new perspective into the form.
In The Cut was notorious when it came out for featuring nude scenes of Meg Ryan who was attempting to break out of type casting as the romantic comedy heroine. The sex scenes between Ryan and Mark Ruffalo are indeed erotic but then again so are the moments before and after. Campion comes into and cuts out of these moments earlier and later than most, locating character specific vulnerabilities in scenes of sexual intercourse. Sex in In The Cut isn’t just titillating fun nor a rendering of power dynamics: it exists as an extension of identity and subjectivity.
How the sex scenes play out inform the scenes built around the mystery and vice versa. In The Cut operates on the assumption that through the erotic the mystery can be grappled with and even solved. It is through sex that the true character of Ruffalo’s detective and Ryan’s professor is known and demonstrated to the audience. Through sex they explore each other and find in those mysteries the answers to the narrative.
The patriarchal constructs of men house the lives of the women in In The Cut. From police stations to subway cars and strip clubs Campion’s film examines how women navigate and survive these hostile landscapes. Be it through language, poetry, dance, or sex; the women in In The Cut must shield their interiority, their identity, from men. When the two do meet it is in erotic encounters where the boundaries of power and desire are blurred, tested, and temporarily redefined.
In The Cut is not an erotic thriller where sex has been imbued into the plot of a mystery. In The Cut is a film that finds mystery and thrills in the erotic. The central mystery is essentially a device by which Campion may explore and navigate her own investigation of the erotic and its relationship to death. In The Cut is bold, audacious and a masterpiece.
