This movie made me feel weirdly uncomfortable in places. It has the poetic quality of Jane Campion’s best-known film, The Piano, and the insane quirks of her earlier work like Sweetie. There are times when you really don’t know whether to laugh or cry, as when Harvey Keitel leaps out of a moving car to chase Kate Winslet up a hill while wearing a dress (and it’s very creepy, btw, how good he looks in that dress, lol… every time I see that guy I realise even more how brave an actor he is: the scene in which Winslet dresses him and puts lipstick on him is just beautiful).

Kate Winslet pulls off the Aussie accent flawlessly to my ears, the whole story is very simply set-up, and the score by Angelo Badalamenti and photography by Dion Beebe, while perhaps not quite as mesmerizing as Michael Nyman and Stuart Dryburgh’s work on The Piano, make this a far better Jane Campion movie than the disappointment that came between them, The Portrait of a Lady (though I have to admit, it’s a long time since I saw that movie, a revisit is definitely in order). I can imagine one day really loving this film.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 13th, 2005 at 2:43 am in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.