Fabulous and much maligned gem, so overlooked and underrated that I had to get my Blu-ray from Germany. I believe I originally saw this at the cinema but remembered little other than how powerful and uncompromising it was. Well, I got that right, this is thrilling, erotic and intelligently engaging throughout. I had to double check the running time as recovered from the emotional onslaught, but yes this does run two hours but is so tight and persuasive that there is not a single lull. The early scene in the bar basement is more explicit than I recall and may have been cut for the cinema release I saw, but certainly sets things up and with the specific tattoo link ensures you are kept upon the edge of your seat for the duration. Sometimes deceptively mundane as with Jennifer Jason Leigh and her boyfriend worries but even here there is an edge as we juggle the ingredients including the fact she lives above a strip joint and the boyfriend is a doctor with family. Meg Ryan's character is more nuanced with men friend complications of her own and as if her New York flat location is not down and dirty enough, albeit with a glorious garden, murder and mayhem seems to constantly impinge upon her ragged life. Jane Campion deals with the Susanna Moore book brilliantly and the street scenes with an emphasis on the busted street furniture, flickering neon and glaring graffiti is all equally reflective of the thrills and spills of city life. Also the whole complicated business of love and sex and death on the streets is vividly and bravely exposed to view in a tense and excitingly dangerous portrayal of desire and the contradictory forces of want and need.

Frannie Avery (Meg Ryan) is a New York City high school English teacher. She is hounded by her ex John Graham. Her half-sister best friend Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) pursues a married man. Frannie meets her student Cornelius Webb at a bar where she becomes entranced by a woman giving oral sex in the back room. Detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) interviews her about a body part left outside her window. She fantasizes about Malloy who asks about the incident at the bar. Richard Rodriguez is Malloy's foul-mouthed police partner.

Meg Ryan was trying to play against her romantic type casting. She is at least able to achieve that. Filmmaker Jane Campion delivers a indie-verier erotic thriller although the thrills don't get there. Frannie is a disconnected and fractured character. The movie is able accentuate that concept but it does need more paranoia in order for the thrills to land. The murky weird stuff in her character is great but the movie falls flat overall. The plot simply does not move enough.

In New York, the lonely English teacher Frannie Avery (Meg Ryan) collects sentences, sayings and new slang in English as a passionate hobby. Her half-sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is an unstable woman, and they are close friends. When a young woman is decapitated in Frannie's garden, the police detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) visits Frannie investigating the murder and they have an erotic affair. Meanwhile, the unknown serial killer commits other crimes, and Frannie becomes afraid of Malloy at the same time she desires him.

I do not know what happened with Meg Ryan: Is she in the end of career? Does she want to destroy her image of "America's Sweetheart"? Is she training to make a movie with Richard Grieco, Angie Everhart, Stephen Baldwin, Shannon Tweed, Maria Ford and other icons of "erotic thriller" genre? I really did not understand why she accepted to work in this movie. The camera is horrible, looking like a soap opera and staying a few seconds focusing the face of an actor or actress or a location, with millions of cuts and without any sequence longer than a few seconds. The plot is so simple and silly that has to explore an explicit free oral sex scene in the beginning of the movie and lots of bad language, contrasting with the correct use of the English language by the character of Frannie, to make some sort of difference. I saw this movie in an American DVD, and at least there is a slang dictionary, with the use of unusual expressions and words that I found interesting to learn some new slang in English. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Em Carne Viva" ("In Live Flesh")