In the television show “The Office,” there is a scene where Michael Scott impersonates comedian Chris Rock. He recited one of his stand ups that involved the N word. There was immediate cringe and secondhand embarrassment. Those feelings came rushing back to me. The narrator in the audiobook for “In The Cut” would read the lines of the black and latino characters in the same vein as Michael Scott. This has nothing to do with how I feel about the story, but I felt it was worth mentioning as this was my most memorable takeaway from the novel. 

With that out of the way, “In The Cut” is a thriller that involves a college professor and a detective who starts having an affair. When I saw the movie pop up on Netflix, the plot looked intriguing. What I didn’t expect was the amount of sex that Meg Ryan, as Frannie, and Mark Ruffalo, as Detective Malloy, would have throughout the movie. When I started listening to the audiobook, there was even more. Because I didn’t see the cover of the book, I slowly realized that I wasn’t listening to a thriller, I was listening to an erotica novel. 

I will admit, Meg Ryan was stunning in the movie. She was the perfect choice for the role as it required a mid 30s college professor who bordered on the nymph mindset. The movie came out in 2003, so Ryan was in her early 40s, but she looked years younger. Her portrayal of Frannie brought an air of mystery with her motives. An example was a scene where she was getting several drinks with her student. In that same scene, she was ignoring an irritating ex-boyfriend played by Kevin Bacon. Frannie never hints on whether she is culpable of the crimes or completely innocent. 

In the first scene of the movie where she looks for the restroom, she sees a man in the shadows getting a blowjob from a young woman. We learn later that she ends up getting murdered. With Frannie lingering by the stairs watching the sex act unfold, she makes the audience wonder what she is all about and we are curious about what she has in store. 

Her performance is why I prefer the movie slightly more than the book. The movie overall, however, was slightly confusing. For instance, there are flashback scenes in black and white where Frannie’s father is ice skating. He leaves his wife and finds a different woman all in one sequence. Then the father cuts off someone’s legs by skating over them? I had no idea what that was about. Both the book and movie touched on Frannie’s relationship with her father, but it bewildered me. They could have left it out. 

I also liked the ending of the book better than the movie. I thought it was typical Hollywood for the protagonist to win in the end. In the book, with Rodriguez killing Frannie, they left us wondering how long he would continue as a serial killer, which is all the more frightening.