Jane Campion

Jane Campion is one of the most applauded and dynamic filmmakers to emerge from Australasia. Her depiction of strong (usually female) lead characters rebelling against stereotypical roles has attracted singular praise, as have her story telling techniques: original and striking visual compositions, non-linear editing style and moments of narrative ambiguity.

Campion's settler saga The Piano, is listed in the US National Society of Film Critics' list of '100 Essential Films' of all time, alongside Citizen Kane, The Godfather and Casablanca.

She was born in Wellington in 1954, daughter of theatrical doyens Richard and Edith Campion. She studied anthropology at Victoria University, then painting, before beginning studies in film at the Australian School of Film, Radio and Television.

Her short film Peel (1982), a study of domestic discipline produced while still a student, took the prize for best short film at the 1986 Cannes festival. That decade she worked mainly in Australia — with a series of acclaimed shorts, plus tele-movie Two Friends (1986), a portrait of the complex friendship between two teenage girls.

In 1989 Campion made her feature film debut with off-kilter genrebender Sweetie, another tale of the suburban grotesque. Shot in Australia, the film follows two sisters, one unassuming, the other noisy, self-centred and damaged. Sweetie famously won both applause and walkouts when it debuted at Cannes.

Her biopic of writer Janet Frame — An Angel at My Table (1990) — was originally produced as a television mini-series. The story was divided into three sections, adapted from the author's three-part autobiography (To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table and The Envoy from Mirror City).

As a feature film, An Angel at my Table won numerous awards including second prize at the Venice Film Festival, where it won lavish praise and extended standing ovations, plus yells of protest after it failed to win top prize. Derek Malcolm in The Guardian praised it as "one of the very best films of the year." Variety found it "totally absorbing", while The Sydney Morning Herald called it "visionary" and "deeply moving". The breakout critical success established Jane Campion as a director to watch, and launched the career of lead actor, Kerry Fox.

Campion's next feature, The Piano (1993) marked the point where Campion crossed definitively from the arthouse into the mainstream. A brooding anti-romance about 19th century colonists in the emotional scenery of the New Zealand forest and coastline, the film inspired further rave reviews and international box office success — especially in Europe, where it broke records for a foreign film in France (ironic considering the US $7 million budget came from there).

Campion became the first woman director to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes for Best Feature (the award was shared with Chinese entry Farewell My Concubine), and only the second woman nominated for an Academy Award for directing. The Piano received Academy Awards for the performances of Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin, as well as for Campion's screenplay. In 1999 varied writings on the film were collected for a book edited by Harriet Margolis.

Campion subsequently directed Nicole Kidman, John Malkovich and Barbara Hershey in an adaptation of Henry James classic A Portrait of a Lady. She was attracted to the project beccause "I think it's one of the most extraordinary written projects of a woman". Later she collaborated with her sister Anna on escaping from a cult tale Holy Smoke, starring Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel. Reviews for both films crossed the gamut.

Campion has been praised by critics for an allusive style: leveraging ambiguity and hinting at what is unseen or unsaid in an scene; and her romance is often romance with a rotten apple. In the Cut (2003) is a darkly erotic exploration of the relationship between a hardened cop (Mark Ruffalo) and a withdrawn writing professor (Meg Ryan). It polarised reception, with the LA Times wondering whether it might be the most imperfect "great movie of the year [...] unquestionably the most ambitious and important film to come along in months ...".

After contributing drought tale The Water Baby to anthology movie 8, Campion debuted her next feature in 2009. Written and directed by Campion, Bright Star portrayed poet John Keats' ill-fated romance with neighbour Fanny Brawne. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gave it four stars and found it "almost certainly" the best of Campion's career. Bradshaw wrote that this "heartfelt film has a nobility of its own; it draws you irresistibly into its world".

When Bright Star opened in America in September 2009, veteran New York Times critic A.O Scott added to the acclaim, calling Camion "one of modern cinema's great explorers of female sexuality", and arguing that the film's “passages of extraordinary lyricism" were "balanced by a rough, energetic worldliness".

Campion is set to begin filming her next production in Queenstown, early in 2012. Six-hour TV series Top of the Lake marks her first project on New Zealand soil since The Piano. Campion co-directs alongside rising Australian talent Garth Davis (TV's Love My Way), and wrote the script with Sweetie collaborator Gerard Lee. American Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) stars as a detective investigating the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old girl, alongside David Wenham, The Piano's Holly Hunter, and Scot Peter Mullan (My Name is Joe).


Sources include
Peter Bradshaw, 'Cannes film festival review: Bright Star is Jane Campion at her best' (Review) - The Guardian, 15 May 2009
Peter Bradshaw,  'Bright Star'(Review) - The Guardian, 5 November 2009
Jane Campion, 'In search of Janet Frame' - The Guardian, 19 January 2008
Ian Pryor, 'Piano lessons' (Interview) - Onfilm, October 1993
AO Scott, 'Keats and his Beloved in an Ode to Hot English Chastity' (Review of Bright Star) - The New York Times, 15 September 2009
New Zealand Movie Wins Eight Awards - NZfilm No 41, October 1991, Page 2
'Sundance Channel signs on to co-produce Jane Campion's Top of the Lake' (Press Release). BBC Worldwide website. Loaded 4 November 2011. Accessed 11 November 2011