Cirrus@Austlit

'This article examines the international critical reception of Australasian Director Jane Campion’s In the Cut (2003). It suggests that the loaded language of reviews, and the pervasive reading of the film’s female characters as masochistic, deluded or sex-crazed, ironically amplify the themes that In the Cut self-consciously explores, namely the relation of romantic love to language, knowledge and narrative violence. Campion’s critique of the popular mythology of romantic love and her depiction of a complex adult female sexuality, a sexuality of private experience rather than display, is in productive tension with the serial-killer thriller format. An opaque female narrative perspective that refuses revelation and complicates (rather than inverts) the predator-prey dichotomy provokes deep unease within the genre. Ultimately, it is the stark vulnerability of the female characters as they risk their limits in real embodied connection that has been reviled by many reviewers, provoking a discourse of disgust and a characterization of the erotic content of the film as perverse or ‘kinky’ when there is little in the film to support this reading. The clichés of female sexuality mobilized in the mainstream critical debate surrounding In the Cut underline the importance of Campion’s demythologizing project and illustrate the continued relevance of feminist-oriented film scholarship, even as some reviews pre-emptively mock or reject such readings.' (Author's abstract)