In the Cut (2003)

Plan: After part of a murdered girl is found in Frannie's (Meg Ryan) garden, Frannie meets Detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo). They begin an affair while Malloy seeks the killer and Frannie's connection to him/her.

I'll confess that Ryan and the bait-and-switch trailers kept me away from this movie for sometime. No number of commercials praising Ryan as a "revelation" were going to make me want to see her to do anything besides be a bubbly, WASPy waif.

No number of attempts at a serious role will shake me of the belief that that's all she can do.

The problem with casting Ryan as Frannie is that Frannie is supposed to be alive with sexuality. Ryan's Frannie, on the other hand, is hollow and empty until Ruffalo's Malloy appears on the screen. There's enough chemistry there to get me through their scenes, but, when she was off without him, I found myself rolling my eyes back into my head from sheer boredom.

Not even Jennifer Jason Leigh as Frannie's half-sister Pauline or an uncredited Kevin Bacon as a jilted ex-lover could make me care about what happened to Ryan's Frannie. In fact, director and co-writer Jane Campion put Bacon in shadow so much of the time that I actually thought he wasn't the real thing but Poor Man's Kevin Bacon for half of the movie.

I'm rolling my eyes at Campion all on her own now. I know she had a brief moment of critical glory with The Piano (which I have never seen), and I certainly didn't see anything worth praising in my screening. The camera angles were poorly chosen, as was her use of steadicam. Of course, it doesn't help that she can't coax a believable performance out of a single one of her cast members.

I give Ruffalo all his own credit. He's a credit to the profession, really. I just love him.

It's funny how many complaints I have heard of the movie in comparison to the book since the co-writer of the screenplay is Susanna Moore herself. I was thinking that it must take a true talent to mess up your own book, but I think I'll go easy on her and just say that she's not cut out for pictures.

And what does the title mean? C- (Ruffalo is always a redeeming factor, but this crap is about two points away from a D)