Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Jane Campion: The director's cut

Jane Campion was originally going to make her sexy noir thriller In the Cut with Nicole Kidman. She tells Fiona Morrow why a story about shattered romantic ideals was 'too close and too strong' for her first choice of actress, but perfect for Meg Ryan

Friday 17 October 2003 00:00 BST
Comments

Jane Campion is using the Dorchester's crockery to brew up a natural cold remedy. The kitchen staff have managed to find a bunch of sage leaves which the bunged-up, crackly-throated Campion is busy mashing with hot water and honey.

She may be 49, but today, even with the sniffles, Campion seems more like a kid. It's something about the way her eyes twinkle - as though the joke's definitely not on her. Or maybe it's the hair, grey at the temples, still blonde at the tips and pulled up into bunches, a hairstyle most of us abandon by secondary school.

She's in London to talk about her new film, In The Cut, a noirish, sexy thriller starring Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo. Ryan plays Frannie, a creative writing teacher. Ruffalo is Malloy, a cop investigating a series of gruesome female murders, who falls for Frannie and embarks on a sensuous seduction. As their affair intensifies, Frannie finds herself pushed closer to the grisly deaths.

The film, like most of Campion's work, has divided the critics at festivals where it has been shown. And, as usual, it's a love it or loathe it deal. Campion doesn't peddle indifference. "I don't know why I inspire such strong reactions," she laughs. "I don't walk around as a person creating such a furore - and you'd think that might be what's going on."

Campion is extremely direct. Her New Zealand accent is delivered clear and loud and she has a disconcerting habit of looking you straight in the eye and staying there. Meeting her is a bit like watching her films: you tend to be swallowed up whole.

An Angel At My Table, Sweetie, The Piano, The Portrait Of A Lady, Holy Smoke - all Campion's films are about women searching for their own identity, struggling to attain love and sexual fulfilment against the odds. And often the struggle leaves them fluttering at the edges of madness. And now and then they tumble in.

Frannie is no exception: she's buttoned her life down into a drab monotony that has become a refuge. "I could really get her," shouts Campion as she roots around the room in search of more honey. "A woman who really loves words, who is hidden - kind of bold and boxed-up. Yeah, I can relate to that."

In The Cut is based on the novel by Susanna Moore. "I was grabbed by the book first," recalls Campion, "but then the fact that it was a genre also really interested me, and that it had such a fresh approach. It was an approach that I felt I could get really intimate about."

In The Cut is fresh, because it turns the tables on film noir. If classic film noir is a male fantasy of machismo up against double-crossing dames, Campion's version is the flip side. This is female fantasy noir - where the women stick together in the face of duplicitous men. And sexually, it's the men that call the shots. "I thought the sex in the book was..." Campion grins broadly: "Wow! I thought it was unbelievable."

Apple TV+ logo

Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days

New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled

Try for free
Apple TV+ logo

Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days

New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled

Try for free

Initially, however, she did have some misgivings about the thriller element: "I felt really uncomfortable about it, until I realised that it is a kind of fantasy. It was a vehicle for examining fear, not really fearful itself. When I talked to Susanna about it, she said that for her the book was really a love story."

I raise my eyebrows and Campion guffaws: "I know. I said: 'Really? Wow. Interesting.' And then I thought that it was a good aim to have, to make it a love story, and we worked really hard to create the love between Frannie and Pauline [Frannie's half-sister, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh], which is, I guess what they want to have with men."

For Campion, this is a story about the romantic myth we're all brought up to believe in: "It's about women who have been through that myth - tried to live it and been failed by it," she posits. "They're in a kind of limbo - what is left for them? Just give up and get married? Pauline is dying to be married - just once to have someone really wanting her."

Is it a personal film? She lets out an ironic snort: "Not exactly."

She stares me down for a beat, then smiles: "It's personal in the sense that it's looking at the love between men and women, their sexuality. I don't exactly see myself in Frannie, but I understand her and I think we've been given an impossible situation with these myths of happiness and romance, and the realities of what we experience and know."

And yet she discarded Moore's original downbeat ending for a conclusion which is more positive. "That's because I'm an optimist..." she counters. "I don't think there's any reason to slit your wrists. In fact, I think it's a great relief to find out that these are just myths - that love and romance is a load of bollocks. So you toss it all out, you don't kill yourself - and you see things for what they are."

A note of playfulness enters her voice as she adds: "Try to reduce your objections and you could have a very fabulous time."

Surely that's not what she thinks her heroines should do: put up and shut up? "Not necessarily," she counters, sharper now. "I feel profoundly sympathetic for most of my heroines and their situations.

"Look at Portrait Of A Lady," she continues. "It's really sad, because it's about the getting of wisdom, and it hurts and that's real. The romantic myth - it's like 'Enough, please!' - it's hurting everybody. Come on - we all know that relationships are hard, really hard, and that lots of people fail at them."

No wonder then that In The Cut proved too raw for Campion's original lead actress, Nicole Kidman, who pulled out of the film during her break-up with Tom Cruise.

"I could see how it might have been good for Nicole to work on a story she could really throw herself into - especially to complete a project she had started," suggests Campion. "But I also could see how it might be too hard because it was too close or too strong. You have to feel compassionate towards someone who's going through such a major change in public."

Not that Ryan didn't have her own very public split with Dennis Quaid and affair with Russell Crowe to contend with. "Meg was a year or so ahead of Nicole," shrugs Campion. "I guess you would have to say that for both women the romantic ideals are pretty much well and truly shattered even though they were icons for the rest of us in that regard."

Ryan is good. Her Frannie is anti-glamour, a woman who has found a certain freedom in dressing down, in not looking for sexual attention. The actress's trademark bouncy blonde bangs are turned a limp mousey-brown and her big blue eyes dulled with the help of brown contact lenses. Campion was similarly determined that Ruffalo wouldn't be able to play on his own crumpled good looks. "I put that moustache on him because a lot of cops really do wear them and for many women they're a real turn-off," Campion chuckles. "A woman like Frannie wouldn't like it, and so that was something she'd have to get over. He'd have to win in different ways."

Malloy's secret weapon is his extraordinary sensitivity between the sheets. "It was terribly scary for Mark," giggles Campion like a naughty schoolgirl. "I told him I thought it was like being a really good chef: you know what to do with ingredients." We're both sniggering now. "Chefs really adore their raw materials, be it the veg or a piece of meat. And they're confident." She breaks off to note, "I find that a very sexy thing - anyone who's confident in their particular area."

What did Ruffalo say to her advice? "'Thanks.'"

But it is a deeply erotic, sexy film, I say, in an attempt to quell more girlish giggling. "Yeah," Campion grins, stretching her arms wide across the back of the sofa. "Yeah. YEAH!" And scary too: I tell Campion that a female colleague had reacted really angrily against being made to feel so vulnerable, and Campion's brow furrows sincerely. "Oh dear," she proffers sympathetically. "Poor thing."

"But Little Red Riding Hood is scary," she continues. "There is a purpose to being scared. It's one of the great emotions, like love. We explore that fear through storytelling, and when we're in the realms of serial killers, forget it, we're no longer in reality, we're in genre.

"And that was the whole point, wasn't it?" she adds, bullishly. "To be scared. If you weren't scared, I'd have pretty much failed."

I ask her what project she's planning to do next and the twinkly eyes start up again: "I am going to take at least four years off from directing to be with my daughter," she says, pleased with herself. "I just live for her. I'm a complete slave, and a happy slave, too. It's fun. She's going through this big riding thing at the moment, so I'm dusting off my jodhpurs and brushing up on my riding skills."

Now it's my turn to say "Wow!" What a privilege, to be able to turn her back on work. But doesn't she think that she'll be at all frustrated?

"I've reached the point where my work obsessions have settled down to the point where it's no trouble stepping back. I don't think I'll have any problems whatsoever. I'm not a person who lives life to work. And," she drops her voice to a whisper, "I've got enough money."

I suggest a more home-based occupation such as writing, but she dismisses the notion: "I have no plans to write. I have no ambitions at all. You think about writing a book and then you realise you'd have to publicise it." She stretches out across the sofa again and yawns: "It seems like no matter what you do, it always ends up back in a room like this."

'In The Cut' is released 31 October

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in