In the Cut

In the Cut (2003) is Jane Campion's erotic thriller, available to watch online on iFILM. Frannie Avery teaches writing in a sweaty, restless New York and keeps to herself. When a young woman is found dismembered near her building, Detective Malloy walks into her life with questions.

What grows between them is reckless and dark. The trouble is that Malloy is running that very case, and the evidence keeps pointing back toward him. Frannie wants a man she has every reason to fear, and each step closer could be her last. Meg Ryan, long the face of warm romantic comedies, deliberately burned that image down here. Mark Ruffalo plays a cop you can never fully trust, and Jennifer Jason Leigh is Frannie's half-sister, living on the edge of the same danger.

Campion adapted Susanna Moore's novel into a clammy, bodily, intentionally uncomfortable noir about female desire and risk. It split audiences down the middle on release: some recoiled, others were drawn in by exactly that rawness. Anyone expecting a tidy whodunit should look elsewhere. Stream In the Cut (2003) online on iFILM.