In the Cut

[rachelmanija]

In 2003, I ate in a restaurant where two people at the next table were earnestly discussing a movie whose title appeared to be Up the Butt. I was baffled by how seriously they were taking the acting, and also by how casual they seemed to be about saying the title in public, until the background chatter hit a lull and I realized that they were actually talking about a movie called In the Cut.

21 years later, I finally saw Up the Butt! I mean In the Cut. Having seen it, I think the former is a better title. There is no explicit butt action per se, butt but it is an amazingly horny movie. Also an amazingly bizarre one. It was directed by Jane Campion, who has since made other extremely horny - but much better - films. It was a giant flop at the time, but has since been reassessed as a slyly witty exploration of female desire and female gaze, unfairly panned by people who couldn't cope with Meg Ryan having sex.

I can cope with Meg Ryan having sex. What I could not cope with was the plot. And the screenplay.

This is the opening dialogue from In the Cut.

Pauline: "What does "broccoli" mean?

Frannie: "Depends on the context. Pubic hair or marijuana. It's a noun.

Pauline: "And 'Virginia'?"

Frannie: "Vagina. As in, 'He penetrated her Virginia with a hammer.'"

Frannie (Meg Ryan) is an English professor who's learning slang from one of her students. She's not paying him, and I suspect he's making up all the slang. Pauline is her half-sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who lives over a strip club and is stalking a doctor. While Frannie is going to the bathroom in the restaurant where she meets her slang coach, she sees a guy with a tattoo of the three of spades, getting a blowjob in the basement.

The next day a woman is murdered in her neighborhood. Two cops spot Frannie in the street. One of them (Mark Ruffalo) is named Giovanni Malloy, presumably because his parents wanted to make sure he'd be a cop so they gave him the most Irish and Italian name possible. They make her get in their car and interrogate her, explaining that the murder victim went to the same restaurant Frannie was at and Frannie might have seen her. Also, the dead woman's head was found in Frannie's backyard. They show her photos of the head.

Frannie: "Am I a murder suspect?"

Giovanni Malloy: "Look, I was wondering if you want to go for a beer or something."

If you're struggling to make sense of this, don't worry! Things become even more incoherent later!

Frannie and Giovanni Malloy go on an absolutely bizarre date. He informs her that his partner carries a water pistol because he's been banned from carrying a gun because he tried to murder his wife. (The partner does, in fact, carry a water pistol instead of a gun - we see him madly spraying it.)

Frannie sees that Giovanni Malloy has the three of spades tattoo. He says it means he's in a secret club. From then on, Frannie is convinced that he's the basement blowjob guy and possibly the murderer, as it never occurs to her that a secret club could have more than one member.

I'm making this scene sound more coherent than it actually is. It's mostly Malloy monologuing in non-sequitors. This is the kind of movie where you keep turning to the person you're watching it with and saying, "Did he actually say...?"

Frannie leaves the bar, gets attacked by a masked man, and, in a truly laugh-out-loud moment, is suddenly hit by a taxi. She calls Giovanni Malloy and they have sex. He sniffs her feet.

After the sex, in a tone like Jack Nicholson on the stand in A Few Good Men, she demands, "I WANT TO KNOW!!! WHO TAUGHT YOU TO DO THAT?!"

It seems like she's referring to oral sex, which I guess she never had before? ("You know nothing, Jon Snow.")

Giovanni Malloy explains that the chicken lady taught him. He delivers another batshit monologue about being molested by an older woman when delivering chickens. Frannie, grasping at some semblance of normalcy, asks him about his children. He says his oldest son wants to be a teacher, which he inexplicably finds extremely bizarre.

Frannie: "What does he want to teach?"

Giovanni Malloy: "Shmoogs." He shakes his head in disgusted astonishment. "Can you believe it??"

I watched this with scioscribe. We both heard "Shmoogs." I looked it up later. It's up the butt in the cut in the script. Urban dictionary says it means "someone who is uncool," but that can't be the meaning in this context as Frannie asks WHAT he wants to teach, not WHO he wants to teach.

If anyone has any idea what "shmoogs" means, please let us know. It sounds like it might be derived from Yiddish (a language commonly spoken by Irish-Italian cops)?

Frannie then goes to a cafe and orders "a dry latte. Very, very dry."

At this point I was just bursting out laughing at random moments, along with every time anyone actually spoke.

She's accosted by her stalker ex, who is with an adorably ugly dog. He asks her to take care of his dog. She says she's sorry but she can't. He screams, "YOU'D RATHER CUT HIS HEAD OFF!"

(The dog is fine.)

I forgot to mention that we periodically get sepia flashbacks to the meeting of Frannie's parents, who are inexplicably ice skating in some kind of period clothing, maybe Victorian, even though the movie is set in modern times so they logically would have met in the 1960s. At one point, Frannie has a hilarious nightmare where her mother has a skating accident that amputates her legs.

Also, the subways have posters of poetry that seems directed at Frannie.



Giovanni Malloy is called to another murder scene. The victim has been hacked up and stuffed in a washer-dryer. He steps over the crime scene tape to call Frannie and give her graphic instructions on feeling herself up.

She's then called to the police station to look at more corpse part photos. A cop has brought in his guitar and is playing it and singing I SWEAR.

Random cop: "We got leaks in the ceiling. They shoot down at us with .22 caliber rifles from the rooftops."

Closeup of bucket of water with a gigantic bullet in it. I have a flashback to the cop in Split Second staring down at a water cooler and screaming, "Is it cold enough to be FULL OF BEERS?!"

Giovanni Malloy drives Frannie to a trash dump by a river, earnestly explaining to her that he innovated a new crime-solving technique, which is talking to suspects. He fires a gun next to her head, then says, "Would you get engaged to me?" She replies, "Is this about the murder?"

Frannie finds Jennifer Jason Leigh hacked to bits and calls Malloy. He randomly screams at her, then tells her the serial killer removed the drain in the sink to get rid of the evidence, concluding, "It scare me that this guy knows about drains."

After a random attack by her slang coach, Frannie and Giovanni Malloy have sex.

Frannie: "You like to watch?"

Giovanni Malloy: "Yeah, I like it in the cut."

????

Frannie decides that he's the killer after all, handcuffs him to a pipe in her apartment, runs out, and tells his partner. Oops! The partner is the murderer, with the same tattoo! He drives her to a lighthouse in New Jersey, where she shoots him. Then she starts walking down the road, barefoot and covered in blood, like Carrie.

Cut to dawn the next morning. She has walked from New Jersey to New York City, with nobody stopping her! She finds Giovanni Malloy, still handcuffed, sitting in a giant pool of...

Me: "Where did all that blood come from? He's not injured."

Scioscribe: "I thought that was pee."

As credits roll, a demonic chipmunk toy previously spotted in Jennifer Jason Leigh's apartment begins to sing.

I think it wrote the screenplay.