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In the Cut
Feb. 16th, 2004 07:04 amSusanna Moore’s In the Cut is the most erotic book I’ve ever read so I was really looking forward to the movie. Missed it in the theater. Rented the DVD last night. No surprise that it disappointed. But it disappointed in unexpected ways.
The book is semiotics as porn. Literally. It’s about a woman who studies language and gestures obsessively, oracularly one might even say. (Is there such a word?) The best scenes in the film for me are the ones where the protagonist, Frannie (Meg Ryan playing against type and doing a great job) stands transfixed in a subway, furtively scribbling words she finds into her secret notebook as if they’re messages from a higher editorial intelligence. Boy, could I relate.
Frannie develops an erotic obsession with the detective Malloy after she watches a girl with blue fingernails go down on him in a bar. In the book, it’s not the blowjob that nails her, it’s a certain gesture he makes – he crooks his finger and instantly she’s hooked. A few scenes later, when he crooks his finger again, this time the finger’s inside her vagina and it makes her come more violently and completely than she’s ever come before.
And they completely leave this out of the film!
Oh, she comes all right. In the highly touted sex scenes, Ryan bares breasts and butt and you’re thinking: wow! those are the tits that shared equal billing with Tom Hanks in three (count ‘em) blockbuster movies! A little slack, those tits. And that’s comforting. Even celebrities can have saggy tits, so I don’t need to hoard the kids’ lunch money to have mine done. But in the film, she comes because he’s licking her pussy – and I’m sorry, but who cares? This is the stuff of Dallas Does Debbie. Cunnilingus is business as usual. Taboo in mainstream movies maybe, but a common enhancement to every day life.
No, it was the finger crooking business that caught my attention in the book. And Frannie’s. "How did you do that to me?" she asks him and she’s not just interrogating him about sexual technique, she’s trying to attach meaning to a sign. And then she begins to watch him, to pay attention. She sees him crooking that finger in a variety of different situations – dangling his coat jacket over his shoulder, ordering a drink in a bar – and goes crazy trying to fathom the subtext of the simple gesture.
That’s what’s interesting about the book. And sexy. Wow! What was he doing to her? the Gentle Reader wonders. Can I try this one at home with my vibrator?
Really, without that finger, the story is just a badly plotted police procedural with some sex scenes and overly arch literary allusions. (Frannie teaches Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and the big splatter scene takes place in a lighthouse under the George Washington bridge.)
Also, though it’s been a while since I read the book, I’m fairly sure that Malloy turns out to be the serial killer, which gives the book a nice, dark, Death In Venice narrative arc. They change this in the movie, I can’t imagine why.
On the plus side, I did enjoy the noir, supercharged imagery of an imaginary New York. Very dreamlike and disturbing. Meg Ryan gave a superb performance. And I enjoyed her relationship with Jennifer Jason Leigh, which is very much like the one I have with my half-sister Jeanna.
The book is semiotics as porn. Literally. It’s about a woman who studies language and gestures obsessively, oracularly one might even say. (Is there such a word?) The best scenes in the film for me are the ones where the protagonist, Frannie (Meg Ryan playing against type and doing a great job) stands transfixed in a subway, furtively scribbling words she finds into her secret notebook as if they’re messages from a higher editorial intelligence. Boy, could I relate.
Frannie develops an erotic obsession with the detective Malloy after she watches a girl with blue fingernails go down on him in a bar. In the book, it’s not the blowjob that nails her, it’s a certain gesture he makes – he crooks his finger and instantly she’s hooked. A few scenes later, when he crooks his finger again, this time the finger’s inside her vagina and it makes her come more violently and completely than she’s ever come before.
And they completely leave this out of the film!
Oh, she comes all right. In the highly touted sex scenes, Ryan bares breasts and butt and you’re thinking: wow! those are the tits that shared equal billing with Tom Hanks in three (count ‘em) blockbuster movies! A little slack, those tits. And that’s comforting. Even celebrities can have saggy tits, so I don’t need to hoard the kids’ lunch money to have mine done. But in the film, she comes because he’s licking her pussy – and I’m sorry, but who cares? This is the stuff of Dallas Does Debbie. Cunnilingus is business as usual. Taboo in mainstream movies maybe, but a common enhancement to every day life.
No, it was the finger crooking business that caught my attention in the book. And Frannie’s. "How did you do that to me?" she asks him and she’s not just interrogating him about sexual technique, she’s trying to attach meaning to a sign. And then she begins to watch him, to pay attention. She sees him crooking that finger in a variety of different situations – dangling his coat jacket over his shoulder, ordering a drink in a bar – and goes crazy trying to fathom the subtext of the simple gesture.
That’s what’s interesting about the book. And sexy. Wow! What was he doing to her? the Gentle Reader wonders. Can I try this one at home with my vibrator?
Really, without that finger, the story is just a badly plotted police procedural with some sex scenes and overly arch literary allusions. (Frannie teaches Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and the big splatter scene takes place in a lighthouse under the George Washington bridge.)
Also, though it’s been a while since I read the book, I’m fairly sure that Malloy turns out to be the serial killer, which gives the book a nice, dark, Death In Venice narrative arc. They change this in the movie, I can’t imagine why.
On the plus side, I did enjoy the noir, supercharged imagery of an imaginary New York. Very dreamlike and disturbing. Meg Ryan gave a superb performance. And I enjoyed her relationship with Jennifer Jason Leigh, which is very much like the one I have with my half-sister Jeanna.
