The series A posteriori le cinéma is intended to be an opportunity to celebrate the 7the art by revisiting flagship titles that celebrate important anniversaries.
After the flowers, comes the pot, if we believe the adage. This is often true for filmmakers with a high reputation. Thus, after many celebrated films, most temporarily fall into disgrace during a flop. However, it sometimes happens that the fury of the critics and the indifference of the public turn out in hindsight to be not only unjustified, but stupid. This is the case of the film In the Cut (Raw) which, 20 years ago, during the weekend of its release from October 31 to November 2, was shunned by moviegoers after being lambasted in the media. Everything and its opposite was criticized for its director, Jane Campion, who nevertheless brilliantly subverted the masculine codes of the erotic thriller and especially of film noir.
Here is a sampling of reviews published in fall 2003. In The Village Voice, James Hoberman is indignant: “Aggressively gloomy and bloody. »
At the end of a text full of condescension, Philip French writes in The Observer : “And despite its innovative appearance, the film digs into familiar furrows. »
In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers concludes: “The result, alas, is a mess. »
In the Los Angeles TimesManolha Dargis is one of the few to be somewhat positive:
“Jane Campion’s stunningly beautiful new film is perhaps the most maddening and flawed great work of the year. »
At the box office, taking into account the advertising budget, the film barely paid for itself and the studio had little interest in it thereafter (revealing anecdote: the collector that I am had to import from France the blu-ray version of the film, long unavailable in North America).
Two decades after its release, it is impossible not to wonder whether the animosity, for that is what it was, sparked by In the Cut was not precisely linked, even if only unconsciously, to this reversal of the conventions of two genres renowned for their “objectification” of women.
In In the Cutit is now the man, his body, which is fetishized by the gaze of the heroine and, by extension, that of the director.
Based on a novel by Susanna Moore, the film stars Frannie (Meg Ryan), a literature professor and fairly introverted author. One day when she goes to the bathroom in the basement of a bar, she sees a woman performing oral sex on a man (Campion shows the erect penis, which is extremely rare in a Hollywood film).
The man’s face is plunged into darkness, but Frannie notices the tattoo on his wrist: a three of spades.
A few days later, a gruesome discovery near Frannie’s apartment brings Detective Giovanni Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) to her door. Both excited and repulsed by Malloy’s crude sensuality, Frannie begins an intense affair with him. She also recognized the tattoo he had on his wrist.
However, the serial killer who attacks women and who the police officer is investigating is perhaps none other than Malloy himself. At least that’s what a conscious Frannie of playing with fire comes to suspect.
A “fatal man”
In what In the Cut was he subverting the codes of film noir? Two examples are immediately obvious. Before naming them, it should be noted that in film noir, there are, among others, two recurring figures: that of the ordinary man plunged into a mystery and who finds himself playing amateur detective, and that of the femme fatale who manipulates, or not, the first, and which will lead him, or not, to his downfall.
Bewitching and the embodiment of ambiguity, the femme fatale is always eroticized.
In In the CutJane Campion reverses the roles by proposing an “ordinary woman” to propel a story of “mystery or conspiracy” crossed by a “homme fatale” who manipulates, or not, the first, and who will lead her, or not, to her downfall , and so on.
Here, it is the character of Mark Ruffalo who is eroticized. It would be wrong to minimize the audacity of this bias. In an essay published by the site Little White Lies in 2018, critic Justin Smith goes in this direction.
“Jane Campion’s much-maligned thriller offers a vital subversion of the male gaze […] When Campion sold the film to potential investors, she pitched it to them as a serial killer tale in the vein of Seven [Sept], by David Fincher. Today, she recognizes what a misleading statement that was, as the film is not so much about the murder, but about the thoughts and experiences of being a woman in the modern world, as well as of male violence; even those who are supposed to protect you. In the Cut is perhaps one of Campion’s most maligned works, but it is also one of the most fascinating…”
Subversion department, Jane Campion does it again in 2021 with her queer western The Power of the Dog (The Power of the Dog), this time with the Oscar for Best Director up for grabs.
To return to the initial welcome reserved for In the Cutit is moreover as if, after poetic and acclaimed works like An Angel at My Table (An angel at my table), The Piano (The piano lesson), which earned Campion the first Palme d’Or awarded to a woman, or even The Portrait of a Lady (Portrait of a woman), another underrated film, we flatly refused to allow the “distinguished” filmmaker to direct a “vulgar” erotic thriller.
It must be said that in 2003, this genre suffered a backlash after the release of too many ersatz Basic Instinctthe sultry success of 1992.
Radical and profound
Another element of the film that possibly irritated at the time: Meg Ryan. In fact, we will remember that the star remained mainly associated with romantic comedies, a snubbed genre that some still like to call “girl films”. Seeing Meg Ryan in such a different context, let’s say much less chaste, must have upset many.
However, the gifted actress did not really break her image: she had already shone in similarly troubled (and bare) areas in Flesh and Bone (The link), by Steve Kloves, in 1993.
HAS The Creditsthe publication of the Motion Picture Association, Meg Ryan recently confided aboutIn the Cut :
“I am very proud of this film […] I love its darkness. This film made me feel, perhaps for the first time, that I was an actress. »
In any case, the reaction of rejection at the time was accompanied by a regrettable blindness, since little, if any, attention was paid to Campion’s radically subversive and profoundly feminist approach. Campion who, moreover, and despite appearances, offered with In the Cut a film in perfect continuity with its predecessors.
In that it is carried by a protagonist in the middle of the process of self-discovery and societal freedom.
In short, after having told film after film the stories of women who break free from real or symbolic constraints, Jane Campion did the same by daring to venture into cinematographic regions where she was not welcome. Conclusion ? In the Cut turns out, ultimately, not to be a “waste”, but to be an eminently consequential, personal and important film.
The film In the Cut is available on VOD on various platforms.