"The Piano"
                        A film review by
                      Linda Lopez McAlister
                     To be published in the
                 November, 1993 issue of "Hers"
                a new feminist monthly newspaper.

   Jane Campion is, to my mind, the most interesting and
accomplished of the very impressive younger generation of women
filmmakers currently active on the international scene.  Still in
her thirties, the New Zealand-born writer and director has been
making movies for twenty years (her teenage effort "A Girl's Own
Story" can be rented from Women Make Movies in New York).  Her
feature films to date are "Sweetie" (1990) which she wrote and
directed and the magnificent "An Angel at My Table" (1992)
adapted from New Zealand writer Janet Frame's autobiography.
With her newest film "The Piano," one of the two Palme d'Or
winners at this year's Cannes Film Festival, Campion is once
again working from a story of her own devising.  And if there is
any aspect of Campion's creative imagination that stands out
above the rest of her considerable talents it is her ability to
devise characters about whom it would be a definite
understatement to say they are "passing strange."  And yet
Campion has an uncanny ability to make us care about and look on
with compassion these odd people with whom she populates her
cinematic worlds.

  "The Piano," which will arrive in U.S. theaters in late
November, is a period piece, almost Gothic in mood, set in the
19th Century in a remote area of New Zealand populated by
indigenous people and a handful of European settlers.  It is,
both in its color palette and in its emotional palette, a dark
film, plumbing the underside of the human psyche just as it
reflects, in the background, the underside of colonialism and the
commodification of women by the men who have the power to decide
their fates.  And yet, the passions that move these people, the
unexpected currents of the underground rivers of their emotional
lives, and the tenacity with which they pursue the things that
are vital to them, nonetheless make this not a depressing but, in
the end, quite an uplifting and certainly wholly unforgetable
film.

   The central figure in the film is a mute Scottish woman named
Ada (played with unbelievable intensity by Holly Hunter) who at
age six stopped speaking; she can hear, she can understand, she
has no physiological speech impairment, but for whatever
psychological reasons she does not speak.  Her one means of self
expression is to pour out her feelings on her piano which she
does so eloquently she hardly seems to be silent.  As the film
opens, she and her small daughter (of whose genesis we learn
nothing) live apparently comfortably in her father's upper-middle
class home in Scotland.  Perhaps because he sees no advantage in
supporting a mute, rather plain, unmarried daughter and her
child, (perhaps out of guilt for unnamed crimes against her) her
father does not hesitate to ship Ada and her daughter Anna off to
the other side of the world when the opportunity arises for an
arranged marriage to Mr. Stewart (Sam Neill) a European trying to
establish a plantation with Maori labor in a wild and
inhospitable area of New Zealand.  Ada and Anna and all their
worldly belongings--including the piano--are shipped off to be
put ashore on a bleak, stormy beach where they wait through the
night for their new "owner," with only Ada's large hoop petticoat
to serve as a tent to shelter them from the cold wind.

   Finally the next morning the welcome party arrives, consisting
of Stewart, a number of his Maori workers, and an illiterate
Englishman named Baines (Harvey Keitel) who has "gone native,"
complete with facial tattoos, and lives among the Maori.  There
are, however, not enough men to carry everything to the remote
homestead where they are to live, so the piano is left behind--
since the new husband is utterly oblivious to the significance it
has for his wife and she cannot tell him.

   Baines buys the piano and takes it to his cabin.  Since Ada
virtually cannot survive without her piano, she begins to trek
through the muddy forests on a daily basis to his place to play
it.  As Baines realizes how essential the piano is to her very
being, he offers to sell it to her one key at a time for an ever-
increasing price that starts with submitting to rather minor acts
of voyeurism but progresses to more and more explicitly sexual
payments.  When her husband, from whom in her rage she withholds
sexual favors, finds out about this, the three of them are
plunged into a triangle fraught with jealousy, torment, and
ultimately, mayhem.  Since nothing about the resolution of this
impossible situation is predictable I won't reveal any more of
the plot.

     What I will say is that if you like extraordinary acting,
character studies that reveal the perversity as well as the
resiliancy of human passions, filmed with impressive cinematic
artistry perfectly suited to the subject matter, don't miss "The
Piano."  And while you're at it, go to the video store and have a
look at the other works in Jane Campion's growing filmography.
She's an artist of the first order.

     Copyright 1993 by Linda Lopez McAlister.  All rights
reserved.  Please do not reprint this review without the
permission of the author.