Professor of humanities in new york, Frannie lives alone. Even as a student slang and detective stories, she has always held away from the appearance glaucous of the city.
One evening, in a bar, it is the witness of a scene, and intimate between a man and a woman. Fascinated by the intensity of their passion, she only has time to notice the tattoo the man and the heat of his gaze.
The next day, she learns that a murder has been committed near her home. Malloy, the police officer in charge of the investigation, has the feeling that she is aware of something. Frannie feels attracted to this man, but his attitude frightens her just as much as the tattoo on his wrist. The doubt creeps in it.
Involved each day a little more in the investigation and in a binding that frees, as much as it scares him, Frannie is tempted to leave everything…Author’s Note
[rating:8/10]
• Release Date : December 17, 2003
• Directed by Jane Campion
• Film american
• With Meg Ryan, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Mark Ruffalo
• Duration : 1h42min
• Trailer :
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This film, directed by Jane Campion, which has already been described with subtlety and intelligence of portraits of women, as in The Piano Lesson, achieved with this film a new frontier.
First of all thanks to its subject matter. Frannie is a woman’s solitary, even lonely, professor of humanities and writer in his hours. She is writing a book on the slang of modern streets, with the help of one of his students, whose motivations towards his teacher remain ambiguous. His sister is sexually more extroverted, but not more happy.
On the occasion of one of his meetings with his student in a bar, she surprises tucked away in the basement, a scene that is going to mess with the chastity restraint that she lives since a few years. A man, whose face is hidden in shadow, is offered a blowjob by a woman whose look dress evokes a prostitute.
Was both shocked and excited, she could not resolve to leave the next this attractive shamelessness. She returned home, she met a police officer investigating a murder : the head of a prostitute was found near her home. Without being able to help advance the investigation, they engage in a sultry affair with this police officer. And everything will become a blur : is she being stalked by a dangerous killer ? His former lover, unbalanced and in love with her, plays there a role ? This student is it really reliable ? And this policeman, mysterious and dark lover with the wrist, the same tattoo that the man with the face hidden in the bar, not hiding a dangerous secret ?
The plot of the film connects the secondary characters and the main in a complex mixture of suspense, psychology and erotica. The topic in itself is of great intensity, Jane Campion has cleverly chosen Meg Ryan to play the role of Frannie. Subscribe to role of beautiful and naive heroines of melodramas, it is surprising to find in a work as dark. Because what Jane Campion wants to film before all, it is the eroticism, the sensuality, the desire. And especially involve the desire of the spectator. Each image is sweating a sexual tension fantasy, glorifying the mixture between excitement, danger, sex and death. Without the franchise, the film is sometimes thought, both in dialogues as in the pictures ; the scene where Meg Ryan discovers by chance the intimate stage, shocked, challenged, and her character is not spared either by the nudity. Mark Ruffalo, never clear, always subtle, has a charisma rare. The staging is superb, each shot mixing sets fuzzy/characters, the net, and vice versa. The body, gestures, silhouettes, flicks of skin of each character reveal a rare eroticism.
The evolution of the plot police a little lacking as the film, but we know that this is not the first priority of Jane Campion. She performs here one of his best films, the most beautiful of Meg Ryan, gives a golden role to Mark Ruffalo, and manages to confuse us as rarely filmmakers gives us the opportunity. A work of solid, sulphurous and movies from the bedside to any film lover works ambitious.