The Piano

The Piano

classified 15
Film

Please note: This was screened in June 2018

Director
Jane Campion
Cast
Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill
Details
121 mins, 1993, New Zealand | Australia | France

Jane Campion became the first female director to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes 25 years ago for this, her extraordinary, triumphant masterpiece (now gloriously restored) about a woman's rebellion in a newly colonised, Victorian-era New Zealand.

Holly Hunter gives a majestic silent performance as Ada McGrath, the Scotswoman and talented pianist who is newly arrived with her strong-willed young daughter (Anna Paquin) in the New Zealand wilderness. Her husband to be, in a marriage arranged by her father, refuses to transport her beloved piano to his home, and sells it to his overseer (Harvey Keitel). He agrees to return the piano - in exchange for lessons that gradually become a series of erotically charged encounters. As the story unfolds like a Greek tragedy, all of their long-suppressed emotions come to the fore...


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