In+The+Cut

Lucy Guo - Director's Project Analysis #1

In The Cut is an extremely visually compelling film about a woman named Frannie who may be a witness to a murder. This movie's theme deals with the darker sides of human nature and emotion (loneliness, loss, etc.), and it’s a psychological study of women’s sexuality, and these themes are shown through the personalities of the different characters in this film. Throughout the whole movie, there’s been a fuzzy dizzying feel to the shots in this film. It’s as though the editor chose half of the scenes in this movie and put a filter on them to blur them and make them a bit shaky. This helps establish the theme because throughout the movie, this might be a metaphor for the theme (the darker side of human emotions) established from the director creating a sense of confusion for you. You’re not supposed to know exactly what’s going on, so there’s a constant air of mystery and unpredictability that surrounds the personalities of the characters.The main character of this movie, Frannie, is shown from her lines and her acting as a very apathetic person. She jots down slang words and phrases she finds interesting in random places, and she seems like a very repressed person, as though something’s holding her back from revealing her true self.The people in her life symbolize the worse sides of human personality. Detective Malloy might symbolize how men sexualize women sometimes, especially with his character’s role in this movie. The theme’s established well through Malloy is because at the start of the film, Malloy is shown to be kind of demoralized and distrustful, and after his interactions with Frannie, he starts to seem more honest and trustworthy. Her ex, John Graham, symbolizes people’s inability to let go of things and the consequences of them. Frannie’s sister, Pauline, shows the more dark and erotic part of life, and she also symbolizes very well how men sexualize women, from her own experiences. Frannie also has a student that’s flunking her class, who also nearly hurt and raped her, and the bouncer at ‘Baby Doll’ is a crossdresser who keeps guns in his purse. Overall, this film shows many different and usually unexplored personalities of people. The setting also established the theme pretty well. Most of the movie seems to be shot in ghetto/seedy places, showing the opposite of city life in New York. Reflecting the theme (the darker sides of human nature) Jane Campion chose to use shadier places to film in (e.g. “Baby Doll” bar/living space, the bar Frannie first saw the murder suspect in, etc.), which I think was amazingly helpful for the theme.The lighting and sounds in the movie are usually kind of native (browns, oranges, with music that sounds gypsy-like and ambient, showing the ambiguity of human nature. Jane Campion’s films usually have themes dealing with darker sides of human psychology, especially gender studies and sexuality issues, and many people have labelled her as a ‘feminist’ because of this. Her movies are often thought of as art pieces rather than films, because of the artistic (and surreal looking) quality of the camera shots. 
 * In The Cut**