Hollywood Video has this great coupon gizmo going on where you can rent up to three new releases for the full five days at 99 cents each. last night i rented In the Cut, Lost in Translation, and Solaris for 5 days and a measly $3.21. without this wonderful coupon [a pile of which i have at my apartment] renting one of these films would have cost me $3.79 plus tax. adding to this coolness is the fact that if i get In the Cut back to Hollywood Video before midnight tonight [actually i returned it this morning] i gain $1 dollar of credit on my next purchase. this might not sound like hot shit to some of you, but when you are poor and like to watch as many movies as i do then it is ver’ ver’ nice.
In the Cut is only the second Jane Campion film I have seen [the first one being The Piano]. I liked the feminism of The Piano, but not of In the Cut. Every man seemed a rapist, every look directed toward Meg Ryan was a violation. It is hard to tell if any man is a good man until the very end. I’d have to watch The Piano and In the Cut again, and next to each other to tell for sure, but I think Campion might just be rehashing the same old thing again and again. [I think she had it right in The Piano except for the very end of the film.]
It seems like only men care about looking in In the Cut. Meg Ryan and Jennifer Jason Leigh only seem to care about ‘getting a dick inside [them].’ The camera makes both male and female bodies into beautiful things. In fact, the camera makes everything it sees into a beautiful thing. I’ve got no complaints in that respect. Campion knows how to pick her people. There is a lot of hand held, long lens, shallow depth of field, blurred focus stuff going on that I think is supposed to reflect the uncertainty of the thriller genre. But for me it also seems to say, ‘I don’t know how to answer the questions I’m asking.’ Of course, Campion’s point could be that the questions can’t be answered.
As a thriller [they don’t do much for me] it reminded me of any Scooby Doo episode. The villain could be any of several characters and ends up being one you never really expected. It was well done in the sense that I never knew who it could be until I found out who it was. Its worth a watch, if just for how pretty it is to look at. I’d like to talk it over with my film theory professor. I might send her an email asking if she has seen it. Kevin Bacon is in the film too.
Tonight I watch Solaris.