Re-Examining The Piano’s Kinky Music Lessons

“Films about mute piano players embroiled in erotic love triangles never did become a burgeoning genre. Perhaps that’s because it’s virtually impossible to imagine another equalling writer/director Jane Campion’s 1993 magnum opus: an extraordinarily brooding drama that occupies an irrepressible space in audiences’ minds and memories,” the Guardian’s Luke Buckmaster writes for the “Rewatching classic Australian [sic] films” column.

“Like the early work of another New Zealand film-maker, Vincent Ward, who also directed a breathtaking Australia/NZ co-production, The Navigator, the film is its hermetically sealed own universe – an almost mystical type of time capsule. It plays with a gothic fog-through-the-trees moodiness that combines an incredible score with lush cinematography.

“The Piano is kinky on its own terms and in its own unusual ways. Campion once told the critic Roger Ebert she “was trying to re-examine what erotic is”. The film contemplates a recurring theme in her work, exploring a woman on the fringes of social norms (arriving after 1989’s Sweetie and An Angel at My Table and before Holy Smoke and In the Cut).

“The Piano remains many things to many people: an enigmatic masterpiece from one of the finest living film-makers.”

The second season of Campion’s acclaimed Top of the Lake is now being filmed, with the story to take place in Sydney and Harbour City, Hong Kong. Elisabeth Moss reprises her role as Robin Griffin.

Original article by Luck Buckmaster, The Guardian, February 20, 2016.