Review of In the Cut (2003) by Karien V — 02 Oct 2007

One can only wonder what a serious female reviewer would have seen in Jane Campion's beautiful, raw and female take on women's sexuality in her latest film In the cut. I, for one, saw the female-experienced rope-walk between (on the one hand) the enticing, impulsive, predatory male, and (on the other) the need for self-preservation. Walking it, the heterosexual woman. Most women. It is space that is very much like the vagina. The tunnel of birth, the greedy sex hole and the menstruation outlet, all rolled into one. Quite a gender-specific space.

It reminds of that haunting scene in one of Campions student films, A Girl's Own Story (1986) in which a young girl with white boots walks along a dark road, pursued by a man in a car. He keeps his distance, slowly plodding behind the young girl. We almost canâ??t see enough to know what is going on: the white boots quicken their pace, and we hear snakes hissing. Excitement and fear. Know what I mean?

â??Some women have no cock sense.â?? says detective Malloy in In the cut. Well, judging from the flaccid treatment of In the cut in the past weekâ??s newsprint, it seems that we are in rather desperate need of some vagina-sense. Vagina-sense-deficient reviewers are spreading the gospel that the film is not quite good enough, and so deprave us all of a chance to look deeper into its subject matter.

Comments range from â??Meg Ryan is awfulâ?? to â??it is too light for itselfâ?? to the revealingly aggressive â??it is a flat out failure.â?? These comments hog pages that could have been used for proper treatment of this rare and fragile female perspective on sexuality.

In In the cut we are faced with a narrative where all the men are on the outside. Women look at men as only women look at men. Women look at their own vagina-sense. Hard to find a hook perhaps if you are not a woman? Maybe.

Most men think that Ken Park is a good film; most women donâ??t like it. It is a cock-sense film in which the female characters are looked at and donâ??t look. Hard to find a hook when you are not a man? Well, maybe not as hard as for men trying to relate to a vagina-sense narrative. Women, after all know what it feels like to be on the outside of the narrative.

What happens when you put a woman who is used to being on the outside of the narrative, inside the narrative? Is she fragile? Is she Meg Ryan in In the cut? Who asks these questions? Who identifies with them? Who waxes lyrical about the answers?

Who reviewed films like Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999), Frida (Julie Taymor, 2002), Monster (Patty Jenikins, 2003), Thirteen (Catherine Hardwicke, 2003), High Art (Lisa Cholodenko, 1998) and Holy Smoke (Jane Campion, 1999)? What did those reviewers see in these films, who did they identify with and how did that impact on their effect in the minds of the readers of these reviews?

In a time when we are seeing a relatively steady flow of challenging female-generated cinema flowing in from over the seas, we need more competent treatment of the subjects they address. We need more vagina sensibility. We need more serious women reviewers!