The Piano [Special Edition]

Acclaimed writer/director Jane Campion's third movie following a series of remarkable shorts and the features Sweetie and An Angel At My Table, The Piano arguably remains one of the best loved cinematic works of the last thirty years.

Combining elements of Gothic romance and Victorian melodrama with a startlingly original take on a traditional love story. Campion's film is one of savage intensity as it follows Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), a mute from the age of six, and her strong-willed young daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) from Nineteenth century Scotland to an arranged marriage and a new life in the barely colonized New Zealand wilderness. Ada however takes an immediate dislike to new husband Stewart (Sam Neill) when he refuses to transport her beloved piano to their home. A neighbouring settler turned half-Maori (Harvey Keitel) offers salvation, buying the piano and then allowing Ada access to it as his tutor. The lessons become a series of increasingly charged sexual encounters and pent-up emotions of rage and desire soon rise to the fore. A poetic, sensory delight in which Michael Nyman's haunting score and Stuart Dryburgh's cinematography illuminate the savage wasteland, The Piano is an intelligent, erotic and extremely powerful account of sexual awakening. The co-winner of the Palme D'Or, and the recipient of eight Academy Award nominations - including Best Picture and Best Director - it offers an acting master class that unsurprisingly saw both Hunter and Paquin rewarded by the American Academy. Campion also triumphed in the Best Original Screenplay category.