Jane Campion's second feature film is a biography of New Zealand writer Janet Frame (1924-2004), drawn from her three sets of memoirs. Miss Frame was born in a large, turbulent family, got herself a bit of an education and spent eight years in and out of mental institutions. During this time, according to the movie, writing became therapy to her, and out of this arose works that were received as brilliant; she was scheduled to be lobotomized on the day she won her first literary award. The surgery never took place.
Kerry Fox plays Miss Rule as an adult, and the svelte actress gained almost thirty pounds for the role and wore an ugly, frizzy copper-red wig for the role -- very different from the Hollywood image of great women writers. Campion has always found fascination in ordinary-looking people.
If there is any point in this movie, other than the surface one of struggle and compassion for the unhappy and mentally unbalanced, it is the thin wedge between genius and madness. As far as I can tell, the only way to reliably tell the difference is to look at the result. If the product works, the creator is a genius, and if it fails, a madwoman.
Kerry Fox plays Miss Rule as an adult, and the svelte actress gained almost thirty pounds for the role and wore an ugly, frizzy copper-red wig for the role -- very different from the Hollywood image of great women writers. Campion has always found fascination in ordinary-looking people.
If there is any point in this movie, other than the surface one of struggle and compassion for the unhappy and mentally unbalanced, it is the thin wedge between genius and madness. As far as I can tell, the only way to reliably tell the difference is to look at the result. If the product works, the creator is a genius, and if it fails, a madwoman.