This is a blended book/film review and contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.

In the Cut is a novel adapted into a film by Jane Campion that, aside from some good visuals and Mark Ruffalo's earthy, exquisite performance that channels the Detective Malloy character depicted in the novel, is not a very good one at all. Back when I first read the book, I was at Amazon.com, looking at reviews for Moore's books, and saw that Moore actually co-wrote the script, adapting from her novel. I'm hoping she isn't responsible for the changed ending, which is one of the most jaw-droppingly ludicrous I've ever seen in a novel-to-film.

The novel is a marvel of an unflinching stare into human behavior and sexuality. It is also quite violent in at least one section and is not for everyone. Someone at Amazon likened the novel to Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, a novel I couldn't finish. Reason? A story about a narcissistic psychopath, misogynistic bastard who liked to cut women up and did it in the most excruciating detail. At least the film version of AS had a black sense of humor and suggested the protagonist was imagining all of the film's events. In the Cut is nothing like Easton's disgusting blood bath.

In the Cut is written by someone who relishes the English language, and a main character (Frannie) who obsesses about its varied meanings right along with obsessing about her human relationships. It's described as an erotic thriller but I find it deeper than that. And it's curious because it is written in first person, which makes it tough to suspend your disbelief at the end but I guess you have to trust that even though you experience the story through the lens of written word, it is as though you're listening to this woman's innermost thoughts. There are scenes in this book that literally took my breath away, the prose is that good and the tension, particularly between the detective and Frannie, tight and hot.

Director Jane Campion is well able to present erotic sex scenes but something is lost in the translation between an NC-17 novel and an R-rated film, though Ruffalo gives his all. Someone at IMDb wrote this about the oral sex scene at the beginning of the film: "Early in the film (unrated version on DVD), we are treated to a graphic, hard core close-up of an act of fellatio that clearly is not simulated." I doubt it. This film doesn't have the bravery of a film like Patrice Chereau's Intimacy.

Getting back to the theme of the blog, it's difficult for me to understand why a director like Campion would a) cast Meg Ryan in a role that required an enigmatic, lost, lonely woman who also possessed a full-blown carnality dying to be explored by the right person. I just didn't get that from Ryan at all; and b) change a perfectly morbid, chilling ending that seemed like it was meant to happen from the time Frannie found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time (hauntingly presaged [and another good touch] by the opening music/song of the film; the minor key version of Que Sera, Sera). But no, she gives the audience a feel good ending?!

MORE SPOILERS

Basically the ending is that Frannie thinks her detective lover is the killer, and manages to handcuff him to a chair and runs off, right into the arms of the actual killer. In a scene where she should have met her fate, the fate she'd been careening toward since the beginning of the film, she cheats death and walks, a bloody mess, but not all her blood, all the way back to her apartment from miles and miles and miles away, barefoot yet, to fall into the arms of the detective.

I'll never understand that ending from a director who has proven herself very brave indeed in the varied themes of her work to do a cop out, to what, get a bigger audience because the ending would have been such a downer!?.

It's like:

1) Norman Maine in A Star is Born changing his mind after he plunges into the ocean to drown himself to save (in his mind) his wife from living her life for him;

2) Emma not dying at the end of Terms of Endearment and Jack Nicholson's character Garrett proposing to Aurora;

3) Not shooting fucking Old Yeller at the end because you don't want to piss the dog lovers off.

For reasons like this, I will never watch the movie version of Cold Mountain. ( )

I got this off the sale shelf. Mildly entertaining. I'll give my copy to anyone that wants it, but I won't advise them to put out their hard earned cash for it. ( )

A great escapist read, a quick and witty thriller, can be read in an hour or so

despite the hype, disappointing in all departments ( )

A Penthouse Letter for the Coffee-Shop Intellectual...

This quick-read is a cheap thrill. It has some eloquent prose and an interesting premise; however, the story as a whole is marginal and actually quite banal. The author seems almost desperate to convey "realism", but relying on photographic descriptions of sexual acts and equally graphic renditions of sadistic brutality are simply not enough to make this story exceptional.

The protagonist, Frannie, is "too constructed" to seem real. Her extreme cynicism is perhaps refreshing at times and her lingustic ponderings are often quite amusing, but overall her personality is meatless. The lover/detective Malloy is a tired police cliche with a knack for some extreme sexual precision. Frannie's student Cornelius shows some potential as a character but quickly disintegrates.

The ending is quite over-hyped and actually rather disappointing. Blood and gore and a meager "explaination" - wow, what a surprise...

Overall, Susanna Moore shows us in this book that she can be clever with words; however, her attempt to portray gritty reality comes across as merely desperate for attention ( )