FilmBlather.com

Jane Campion's In the Cut is messy, illogical, all over the place, and very, very interesting. Based on a novel by Susanna Moore, who co-wrote the screenplay with Campion, the movie twists, doubles back on itself and indulges in tricky symbolism, all while the director plays games with her expensive filmmaking equipment. Meg Ryan habitually misplaces her clothes, Mark Ruffalo may or may not be playing a serial killer and there's a scene where a man cuts a woman's leg into sections with ice skates. I dare you to be bored.

I see this as a collection of subtexts, or maybe a portrait of a damaged psyche, rather than a story. It's supplemented by a pair of great performances, compelling direction, and remarkable thematic continuity. At the end one realizes that one can't impeccably piece the plot elements together, but it doesn't much matter: thanks to its beguiling maze of recurring flashbacks, the film coheres emotionally.

You think the film is a mystery, and it sort of is, but it's also sort of a love story, and sort of a lot of other things. Meg Ryan, not a hint of her cute-as-a-button persona in evidence, plays Frances Avery, an English teacher and urban slang scholar who thinks she may be privy to some facts regarding the brutal murder of a young woman -- she saw, or believes she saw, the girl having oral sex with a man who has a three of spades tatooed on his wrist.

Frannie leads an isolated existence, plagued by bad dreams and memories that hideously distort themselves inside her mind. Her half-sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is similarly troubled, living above a strip club and engages in questionable behaviors, such as stalking her former lovers. Detective Malloy (Ruffalo), who knocks on her door to ask some questions, interests her -- he's brooding, unpolished, and a little scary in a good way. She agrees to date him even though this is maybe the riskiest love affair imaginable; she may be a suspect, after all.

The opening credits contain a breathtakingly gorgeous shot: we see a man's black-gloved hand curl into a fist as he ice-skates off into the distance, crosses the screen right-to-left in a blur, then comes skating back up, leaving a subtle trail of blood on the ice. We do not learn the meaning of this vision until very late in the film, but we have a pretty good idea that that's what it was: a vision.

Though that may be the highlight of the cinematography by Dion Beebe (Chicago), the whole of In the Cut is a thing of beauty. I particularly liked the way that Beebe and Campion play with focus: at times, Frannie and other characters are seen half sharp and half a blur. The movie is shot in warm colors -- dark browns, mostly -- but still manages to look like a chilly day. The sex scenes recall Eyes Wide Shut in their intentional lack of eroticism.

The repeated flashback, which involves Frannie's father proposing to her mother as it begins to snow, connects with both the film's first shot, in which Frannie sees what she, in a sleepy delirium, thinks are snowflakes, and the ending, which brings back the theme of impromptu engagements in a big way (and implausibly, but it doesn't matter). Early on, we see Frannie teaching the short story "The Lighthouse," and one of her students comments that it would need at least three dead ladies to be interesting; look for that to come back after the third girl is murdered. There's more stuff like that, and it's great fun to pick out.

Yeah, it's ridiculous. Everyone says so; it must be true. But if logic is the ultimate standard to which you hold the films you watch, then you're throwing out a lot of great work. In the Cut has a riveting protagonist, a challenging structure and considerable visceral power. It is literally a psychological thriller.