Wikipedia refers to this movie as an “American psychological thriller film” while it was sold as a detective story and derided by critics as being an erotic thriller. You know what that means: it’s a giallo.

It’s also way deeper than anyone gave it credit for.

Its heroine, Frannie Avery (Meg Ryan), is a full and rich character, at once introverted and attracted to danger. The New York City that she lives in is also filled with both violence and sex, even in her students. One of them, Cornelius (Sharrieff Pugh), believes that John Wayne Gacy wasn’t guilty of his crimes because he was a victim of desire. Moments later, Frannie watches a couple engaged in oral sex in public. And on the subway, every ad seems to be a poem written directly to her.

That violence gets close, so close, to her as a severed limb is found in her garden. That’s when the men — and police — intrude on her life. Detective Giovanni Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) is so forward when he questions her that she’s excited by him. Yet as animalistic as he seems, he feels nobler than the others, like his partner Richard Rodriguez (Nick Damici) who isn’t even allowed to carry his gun after trying to kill his wife.

Frannie also notices that Malloy has a 3 of Spades tattoo, the same one she saw on the man getting pleasured in public. It’s because he’s in a secret society and can’t tell her anymore. Later that night, she’s attacked while walking home and he comes to her rescue. They have sex and when she wakes up, she realizes that some of her jewelry is missing.

But when going over the details with her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Frannie starts to wonder if Malloy is the killer as well as the masked man who stalked her. Her student Cornelius is questioned — his term paper was written in his own blood — and she has to tell her ex, John (Kevin Bacon), that she thinks she’s having panic attacks. It doesn’t let up, as she soon finds the severed head of her sister.

And when Malloy has her jewelry and a key to her sister’s apartment, it all seems to come together. Or does it? Like in all giallo, can we even trust our narrator?

Jane Campion and Laurie Parker spent five years developing the film. Also, Nicole Kidman got a producer credit because she was originally cast as Frannie, but dropped out in the middle of her div force to Tom Cruise, wanting more time with her children.

I really like what Jordan Searles said about the film, as it describes why it works so well for me: “Shots depicting Frannie being watched mainly serve to highlight how women have to navigate the world under the gaze of men. Frannie is always looking over her shoulder, constantly assessing her surroundings. She knows she is being watched, yet continues to pursue pleasure on her own terms. In the end, once Frannie has faced her worst fears, In the Cut rewards that bravery.”

It’s a rare film that is able to subvert the male gaze without falling into it. It also isn’t afraid to show depictions of sex that don’t seem alien from the early 70s heyday of Italian psychosexual murder films. I always passed on this movie, a victim of how it was sold and reviewed, and now I know that I was wrong.

You can get the uncut director’s edition of In the Cut from Mill Creek Entertainment on Deep Discount.