All 8 Jane Campion Films, Ranked

We’re assessing every one of her feature films, from the recent Oscar-nominated hit ‘The Power of the Dog’ to her early, indie work.

In her more than three tenner of get films , Jane Campion has occupy a numeral of roles within the amusement industry . She ’s been a Cannes - fete new upstart out of New Zealand , an Oscar winner , and a panned Hollywood pariah , mainly because she dare to make a picture show where Meg Ryan was a sexual being . ( More onIn the Cutlater . ) Now , she comes into the 2022 Oscars — where her filmThe Power of the Dogis a Best Picture front - smuggler and she the potential Best Director achiever — as an older stateswoman whose pioneering work is at last being wholly praised .

8.The Portrait of a Lady(1996)

On the surface , The Portrait of a Ladyis exactly what you ’d have a bun in the oven from a film that echo Golden Age Hollywood ’s era of " women ’s pictures , " movies made for the softer whims of a distaff audience : a lady protagonist enamour between a routine of lovers , opulent menstruum - appropriate costumes , breathtaking Italian landscapes , someone inevitably dying from " the consumption . " But because it ’s Jane Campion adapting novelist Henry James — both of whom are artist preoccupy with humanity ’s darker urge — it ’s much more than that . Nicole Kidman and Nicole Kidman ’s frizzy up - do star as Isabel Archer , a beautiful unmarried woman who has spurned a identification number of suer , whose independence and wealth take out the attention of American expatriate Madame Serena Merle ( Barbara Hershey ) , who is determined to set up Isabel up with her former lover ( John Malkovich ) . sexual love triangles , 11th - time of day biologic parent unveil , and multiple face slaps ensue . — Emma Stefansky

7.An Angel at My Table(1990)

Campion ’s second feature film further ground her as a theater director to watch , as she took the animation of beloved New Zealand generator Janet Frame and fashioned it into a lyric , sweeping , and intimate portrayal of a cleaning lady living under the onus of a world that underestimate her . With special attention taken in seemingly every shot , silene dramatizes Frame ’s three autobiographiesTo the Is - Land(1982),An Angel at My Table(1984 ) , andThe Envoy from Mirror City(1984 ) , which were originally presented as a television miniseries that cast three actors — Alexia Keogh , Karen Fergusson , and Kerry Fox — as Frame in her childhood , her adolescence , and her adulthood . The lead plastic film follows Frame ’s life history growing up in a short family , living in a mental origination , and , following her safety valve , writing and publish some of New Zealand ’s most famous written works . — ES

6.Bright Star(2009)

After the muted receipt to the contemporaneous erotic thrillerIn the Cut , Campion come back to the past , chronicling the tragical Romance language between Fanny Brawne and the poet John Keats . Abbie Cornish brings a startling worked up intensity and intellectual passion to the role of Brawne , who first fall in love life with the under the weather poet ’s word , while Ben Whishaw nails the delicate fragility of a troubled , damned figure like Keats . ( Paul Schneider is also excellent as Keats ' roguish friend . ) Though the material might ab initio scan as dry fodder for the phantasy of stuffy English majors , catchfly locates the heat and drama in each heedful glance , brush of contact , and qabalistic remark . As easy as her approach path can be , zero in on the pleasures of the lyric and the natural beauty of the landscape , Campion also entrance the erode gloominess and the cosmic cruelness of the romance at the motion picture ’s center.—Dan Jackson

5.Holy Smoke!(1999)

Holy Smoke!confounded some people back in 1999 , but it ’s one of multiple Campion flick that have been reappraised in recent years . Kate Winslet , hot off a minor phenomenon calledTitanic , made a bluff left veering , playing a spiritually cheer Australian 20 - something list Ruth who has gone and devote herself to the teachings of a mystical Indian cult leader ( Dhritiman Chatterjee ) . Campion wrote the handwriting with her babe , Anna , craft a sweaty , eccentric parable about the maximalism that ’s possible when sometime find an off - kelter mode of self - breakthrough . She castThe Piano ’s Harvey Keitel as a deprogrammer hired by Ruth ’s parent to relieve their daughter of her new persuasions , and naturally they strike in love in the process . It ’s Campion ’s funniest moving picture , pelt with a hallucinogenic spirit that ’s as foreign as it is watchable . — Matthew Jacobs

4.Sweetie(1989)

Some might indicate that Campion ’s filmography technically go withTwo Friends , a made - for - TV film broadcast in Australia , but for our purposes we ’re starting with her stagily discharge debutSweetie . Everything you think you know about Campion ’s employment might be challenged if you ’ve never seen this audacious and sometimes downright freakish piece . Kay ( Karen Colston ) is a mousy woman who begins a romanticism with her engaged coworker on a destiny teller ’s advice . Their relationship has already pip a rough full stop when Kay ’s chaotic sister Sweetie ( Geneviève Lemon ) crash into her liveliness . Sweetie is a deluded hurricane who call up she is destined for stardom because of a single dance move involving a chair . Until it slew into catastrophe , Sweetieis a frequently screaming , off kilter house portrayal . — Esther Zuckerman

3.In the Cut(2003)

get in in the early ' 00s at the end of theerotic thriller ’s heydey , manycritics thoughtIn the Cut , Campion ’s take on the musical style , fall flat . They felt the twirl in the film based on Susanna Moore ’s 1995 novel were " half - baked , " and simply could n’t sound that rom - com sweetheart Meg Ryan would asterisk in a dramatic , sexually explicit character . But it ’s because Campion was n’t trying to replicate her manlike contemporary ’ version of an erotic thriller that the movie stands out and feels so uneasy yet gripping . It ’s rather a film about what it can be like for women to be sexual agent — constantly voyage the male gaze and masculine aggression in ordering to meet their desire . Ryan gives a career - proficient performance as Frannie ( a part originally meant for Nicole Kidman , who is among the producer ) , an English teacher concerned in research her sexuality who unite with a homicide detective ( Mark Ruffalo ) and accidentally becomes embroiled in a murder investigating . Oscillating between trance Frannie ’s pleasure - seeking journey and her feelings of being learn , pursued , and objectified by humans , Campion crafts a rare dark Equus caballus of a cinema that truly subvert the male regard and now feels wildly forward of its metre . — Sadie Bell

2.The Power of the Dog(2021)

It ’s operose to not be knock out by Campion’stake on the westernif you ’re a longtime fan of hers . Much like her other work , she accept the traditional and knocks it on its head . Based on Thomas Savage ’s 1967 novel of the same name , catchfly explores oddity and masculinity through Phil ( Benedict Cumberbatch ) , a loose canon of a man who when his brother marries Rose ( Kirsten Dunst ) , who comes along with her teenage son , Peter ( Kodi Smit - McPhee ) , decides that tormenting them is his act one priority . Butunder the surface , there ’s a lot more to Phil than meets the eye , which becomes unearthed when he begins an uneasy friendship with Peter . It ’s a beautiful , brutal , and thoroughly modern retelling of the western . — Kerensa Cadenas

1.The Piano(1993)

Maybe it ’s a cop out to putThe Pianoat the top of this leaning . For most casual motion picture fans , The Pianois when Jane Campion first burst into public knowingness . Campion pull ahead the Oscar for Original Screenplay for the 1993 motion-picture show , while her player Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress , severally . Is it at this gunpoint overestimate ? Or one of the rare " Oscar movies " that deserve its status . In a way , I ’m tempt to say thatThe Pianois underrated . Far from its report as a unaired period drama , The Pianois a subversive and sexy masterpiece . hunting watch plays Ada McGrath , a Scottish adult female with a child ( Paquin ) out of wedlock , who is shipped off to conjoin a man in New Zealand , Campion ’s house commonwealth , then experience the effects of colonization . Her husband Alisdair Stewart ( Sam Neill ) is befuddled by his new bride . She never talk , and has almost a compulsive infatuation with the piano she has shipped over along with her important person . That instrument is the accelerator for Ada ’s human relationship with Baines ( Harvey Keitel ) , Stewart ’s envoy , a yobbo who has adopt Māori customs . What starts as a transaction blooms into luxuria and a romance . It ’s a revolutionist , but hard to delimitate , take on female desire , captured with specificity and emotion . It may be her most well do it body of work , but it ’s also as idiosyncratic as the rest of her filmography . — EZ

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