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| Released: |
1993 |
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| Origin: |
Australia/ France |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
120 |
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Ada (Holly Hunter), a mute since the age of six - for reasons unexplained - has borne an illegitimate daughter, now nine years old (Anna Paquin). This being the nineteenth century, Ada has been sent off by her father to marry Stewart (Sam Neill), a man she has never met, on the other side of the world in New Zealand. The only ways she can express her feelings are through sign language, and playing the piano. Her new husband has no interest in her piano, and leaves it stranded on the beach where she landed. But a tattooed neighbour, Baines (Harvey Keitel), appreciates the beauty of her piano-playing and buys it. Baines uses it to get Ada into bed with him, paving the way for a romantic triangle, as the husband learns what is going on, through the child. |
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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| Though beautifully shot and intensely acted by Holly Hunter, this fashionable feminist fable which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes didn’t impress me. Its numerous admirers seem able to disregard its shambolic plot, failure to understand its period, and characters who are inconsistent, unsympathetic and puppetlike caricatures. Although writer-director Campion goes to great lengths to ensure authenticity of costume, she leaves out scenes crucial to a sense of social authenticity: is it credible that no one would have pointed out a wife's marital obligations - around the house, if not in the marital bed? Everything Ada does, she seems to do for herself, with no thought for her child's welfare. Her sullen attitude has a strong whiff of 70s, women-as-victims, feminism: the underlying notion is that the world owes women a loving. When she does change towards her husband - from hostility to, so far as I could tell, genuine lasciviousness - she does so without rhyme or reason. But then none of the characters makes sense. At one moment, the little girl hates her new step-father; the next, she is informing to him of her mother's adultery. One moment, Sam Neill's character is consumed by jealousy and hatred, brandishing an axe like Bluebeard; the next, he's reason personified. No sooner has Ada tried to commit suicide than she decides not to. Humans are paradoxical and they do change; but in a drama we're entitled to some clue as to why. In The Piano, they just seem like marionettes under the control of a whimsical puppet-mistress - and an absent-minded one. In one scene, Baines tells Ada he's illiterate; a few minutes letter, she's sending him a note to tell him she loves him. The acting, too, is variable. Harvey Keitel seems completely out of his depth: his accent, along with that of the little girl (who incomprehensibly won an Oscar), seems to alter from scene to scene. But the actors have little chance to flesh out characters written in a politically correct shorthand: Ada's husband is cutting down the forest, so he can't be in touch with his emotions; Baines has gone native and wears Maori tattoos, so he must be all right. There were times when I longed for the relative subtlety of male characterisation in a Jilly Cooper novel. Feminists may smile knowingly at the way Ada is punished - it fits in neatly with modern preconceptions that men will countenance no threat to phallic supremacy - and men may marvel at Sam Neill's accuracy with an axe. Film students may admire the clarity - or the crashing obviousness - of the piano and axe symbolism throughout. They may commend the unusual camera viewpoints, and not mind the fact that these are more often gimmicky than revelatory. Even less will they be bothered that the direction gives no impression of space or distance, in a film whose early plot hinges on how far or not Stewart's house is from the beach where Ada lands. Posterity may not be so kind. | | "I really wanted to do a love story where you could see the growth from fetishism towards eroticism, and to more of a blend of love and sexuality." | | | | (Jane Campion) | |
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(AAW, LONDON FILM CRITICS' AWARD - ACTRESS OF THE YEAR), Anna Paquin 
