Jane Campion's Oscar-winning movie follows Ada (played by Holly Hunter),an immigrant to the New Zealand outback and an arranged marriage, who has not spoken for years and lives her life through the sound of her piano. Her husband (played by Sam Neill) is a man without much understanding, who tries to break the connection between his new wife and her piano; in contrast to him is the wild illiterate Baines (played by Harvey Keitel),a tattooed loner, who reaches into Ada's soul and helps her to regain contact with her emotions and ultimately, her voice too. The film is visually compelling, with its muted colours and wide open spaces, and uses the soundtrack by Michael Nyman in such a way so all the elements fit together. Keitel and Hunter give excellent performances within a sensitive and sensual screenplay, while Anna Paquin is impressive as Ada's wise daughter, always watching and always aware. Campion managed to make the story touching, involving, and sexy, and it well deserved the plaudits heaped on it.

Director-screenwriter Jane Campion started at the movies in the early 1980s at the Australian School of Film and Television... She clearly emerged from her cultural heritage to become one of the world's premiere female directors...

Campion's films typically have a treacherous terrain of searing emotional intensity... We recognize ourselves in the ways her characters think and behave... Her work signifies a break with the tragic, the Gothic and the sentimental...

Her exquisite film which won three Academy Awards including one for Campion's screenplay, is not about sex, but about passion...

Jane challenges the viewer on many levels... Her film (literary inspired from 'Wuthering Heights') explores new territory in the delicious handling of female sexuality and pleasure with the ecstasy of a loving relationship...

In one scene Ada, with tears of anger, hits Baines hard across the face, as if she has spoken words of love... With each new breath, with every moment that their eyes remain locked together, the promise of intimacy is confirmed and reconfirmed and detailed... Only their feelings and emotions guide their instincts...

No woman artist had approached sex in such a direct and liberating manner... Campion's scenes shows Baines' face crumpling with the exquisite pain of his pleasure... Ada moving his head to her chest, and Baines struggling through her dress anxious to touch her skin...

Nominated for eight Academy Awards, the film tells the story of Ada, a strong willful 19th-century Scotswoman who hasn't spoken, since she was six years old... Ada has been set up in an arranged marriage to a British emigrant in New Zealand...

The film opens with Ada who is carried to shore on the shoulders of five seamen to meet her husband Stewart, a landowner who is without much emotion or real love... Her large Victorian skirt spreads across the men's arms and backs... On her head a black bonnet... Around her neck her pad and pen...

Campion manages to chose a cast to suit her purpose and style... Ada is not any easy role and Holly Hunter plays her without vanity... Her face is alight with facial expression, sometimes tender, sometimes sad, sometimes humorous, sometimes soft, while her hands and fingers are quick and neat...

Ada speaks through sign-language translated by her young daughter Flora, and through her beloved piano which happens to be the prime source of her expression... She takes great delight in feeling her fingers on her piano's keys... But in the way she eyes the illiterate, uncultured Baines, there is an insolence and lack of respect... We watch her stopping abruptly, indignantly, as he touches her neck...

Harvey Kietel plays the lonely neighbor George Baines, a depressive man who is everything Stewart is not... He has never seen a graceful woman behave with so much abandon... Ada moves to the piano... She wants to touch it, but she is torn by her feelings, wanting it, but not owning it... Baines views Ada totally absorbed in her piano music... He seems satisfied to watch... He finds himself edging irresistibly closer, magnetically drawn to the spectacle...

Baines enjoys her fingers moving on the keys and the small details of motion on her face... Twice he closes his eyes and breathes deeply... He is experiencing a strange sense of appreciation and lust... He feels powerless... He is desperate and romantic... He no longer admires her absorption with the piano... He is jealous of it... His attention finally focuses on her neck as it bends further or closer to the piano... Ada's long white neck proves irresistible... Baines comes across the room, kisses her, and asks: 'Do you know how to bargain, nod if you do. There's a way you can have your piano back.'

Anna Paquin has been proclaimed one of the best child acting roles ever... She gives a subtle and complex performance as the very cute little girl torn between her mother and stepfather... She looks over at the house suddenly aware that the piano playing has stopped suddenly... She investigates the mystery peeping through the various cracks and holes in the loosely built hut... Her venture is one of challenge and curiosity... Her complex portrayal of Flora won her the Best Supporting Actress...

Sam Neill plays the intense, moralistic and very-Victorian husband Alistair Stewart, who never understands his woman's nature... He surveys Baines' hut suspiciously... There are sounds inside which are worrying him... By wondering around the hut, he finds a hole where he can see the two lovers kissing, and undressing... He reels back angry, but just as we might expect him to burst through, he steps up to look again...

Jane Campion creates an unusual film, poetic and lyrical, complimented by a beautiful cinematography of the haunting woods, which by many critics has been named as a masterpiece... She is the first female director to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes...

Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) has been mute since she was 6 without a reason. She and her young daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) are brought over to New Zealand to marry Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill). She communicates with Flora with sign language. Her piano is her prize possession and her voice. However Alisdair deems it too heavy to carry and leaves it on the beach. Then Alisdair sells the piano to his illiterate neighbor George Baines (Harvey Keitel). George proposes to sell it back to her with one visit for every piano key and she counters with just the black keys.

This is romance novel melodrama from director Jane Campion and it is epic. Everything works including the epic landscape. The pounding waves, the lush forest and the isolation becomes part of the story. It is filmed beautifully. The performances are great. Anna Paquin is precocious. Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel are not the natural romantic pair but there is something touching about that.