from In the Cut (2003) dir. Jane Campion, starring a Meg Ryan who is husky where she is normally shrill, neuroses not as paper thin or or clear cut as the Hollywood mill tends to churn for their single white females.
she is lean but not wane, drinks vodka against an open fridge in the humidity of summer and grief, handcuffs her prince to a water main. she’s intoxicated by her sexuality, coughing and sniffling, a loud woman with no patience for bullshit, who doesn’t look away. she sees a man in the darkness, long blue nails on his thighs and lipstick on his zipper. she sees a man who cuts women into pieces and throws them in washing machines and refrigerators.
this is bluebeard myth in the city, in our modern times, which is to say that he lies around every corner, in the men who ask why you are so angry or why you have to be like that, baby. a beard will always chafe, even against the stronger skin, the palms and soles of feet. this movie knows that walking through wolf whistles is like crossing on glass, that even sisterhood cannot carry us over the mines that have been buried inside of us. it knows just where the battlefield lies.
