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The Piano (15)

Jane Campion's The Piano

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its release, we're revisiting Jane Campion’s extraordinary The Piano, the only female-directed film to have ever won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Jane Campion became the first female director to win the Palme d’Or for The Piano, her extraordinary masterpiece about a mute woman’s rebellion in a newly colonised New Zealand. 

Holly Hunter gives a majestic silent performance as Ada McGrath, a mute woman and talented pianist who arrives with her young daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) in New Zealand in the 19th century. She is to marry frontiersman Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill), but takes an immediate dislike to him after he sells her beloved piano to his overseer George Baines (Harvey Keitel). Attracted to Ada, Baines agrees to return the piano in exchange for lessons that gradually become a series of erotically charged encounters.

Soundtracked by Michael Nyman’s evocative score, it won Oscars for Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin and Best Screenplay for Campion’s typically individualistic script.

Tagged with: Cinema New releases F-rated

New Zealand/Australia/France 1993 Dir Jane Campion 121 min

This film is F-Rated. The F-Rating is a classification for any film which is directed by a woman, and/or written by a woman.

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