Film
The Piano
- Director
- Jane Campion
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 121 mins
In the mid-19th century, New Zealand landowner Stewart (Sam Neill) takes delivery of his mail-order bride Ada (Holly Hunter) and her nine-year-old daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) on an inhospitable beach. But he immediately gets up the pale, austere and mute Ada’s nose by insisting that her beloved grand piano be left behind on the shore. His illiterate Celtic estate manager Baines (Harvey Keitel) takes a shine to the new arrival, buys the piano from Stewart, and offers to give it back to Ada in return for sexual favours. So begins a dangerous game of deceit, during which repressed passions and primal jealousies erupt and spiral out of control, to the mournful tinkling of ivories. Sensual, sumptuous, deeply erotic and almost literary in flavour, Jane Campion’s beautifully photographed award-winner boasts a fair share of over-emphatic symbolism and some excellent performances. Hunter is outstanding as Ada, whose only direct communication with the world is through music; Keitel gives an oddly affecting, unusual performance as the deeply smitten, guilt-ridden Baines; and Sam Neill is, well, Sam Neill, as usual – perfectly cast as the drippily conformist colonial clod.
The Piano is back on screen in fully restored form to mark the 25th anniversary of its unveiling at Cannes, where Jane Campion became the first female director to win the Palme d’Or.
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