It's impossible to review In the Cut without getting into corny sexual metaphors, but I'll try.

The film is a largely female production, directed by Jane Campion from the novel by Susanna Moore and produced by Laurie Parker and Nicole Kidman. It's nice to see a movie made primarily by females for a change, but it would have been nicer if the movie was any good.

Instead, what we get is a movie that wants to be about sex, but tries too hard to also be a serial killer thriller and ends up being nothing but dull people having strange sex while half-heartedly trying to solve various murders.

I loved The Piano, in which Campion directed similar naked people doing similar naked things, but in the former the love act was seen as something beautiful and poetic. Here it is as grungy as everything else in this movie.

Meg Ryan will shock a lot of her fans by appearing not only naked, but gloomy. Even her orgasms are sullen, gritty orgasms as opposed to the delightful one she supplied in When Harry Met Sally. She plays a teacher who gets caught up in a murder investigation and becomes romantically entangled with the lead detective.

Mark Ruffalo goes the rugged route, aping Marlon Brando meanwhile in his slovenly suave portrayal of the detective. He ends up being the male version of the one-dimensional spider-woman we have seen in countless other movies. Campion and company should know that two wrongs don't make a right.

It seems like they are trying to make some kind of bold statement about sexual politics, but it's so vague and pretentious that, in the end, I didn't know what they were saying.

One thing that did come across was the filmmakers' obsession with oral sex: showing it, talking about it, basing significant plot elements on it. This makes sense, because In the Cut ends up being the celluloid equivalent of just that.

-- Reviewed by Nicholas Norcia