Erotism and Culture

Rating: 10/10 (20 January 2007)

The first known woman director in film history, Mme. Alice Guy, died claiming she was also the first person to ever shot a fiction film, a credit usually given to Georges Méliès. Since Guy's first movie, "La fée aux choux", in 1896, to Jane Campion's "The Piano", a complex story of women in films is still in progress, from Guy's pioneer efforts to today's on-going fight against sexist role assignment to female workers in film industries, a fight against stereotyped participation as script girls, costume designers, or make-up artists. Many may become accomplished writers, editors, producers or directors, but many others can remain in the dark, even after obtaining a degree of success, as Dorothy Arzner in the 1930s. With her 1993 masterpiece, a century after the invention of several devices to register moving images, New Zealander Jane Campion made a full circle of cinematic melodrama, bringing us back to its origin, heavily influenced by the 19th century novel, with a twist: Campion took the classic model of representation, and used its best resources to tell a story from the Romantic era, enhanced by a contemporary point of view. Two currents meet in this beautiful motion picture: first is eroticism, powerfully claiming for women's rights to decide about their bodies and sensual options; and second is culture and its decisive role in people's lives. Scottish Ada McGrath (a magnificent Holly Hunter, winner of multiple international awards for her first-rate performance) is a frail individual, surrounded by patriarchal violence and a wild environment, and although she struggles for her rights to the extreme, in the end she is seen --in the last, poetic submarine shot-- tied to her piano, suggesting our inner fixation to the cultures that mold us. "The Piano" shows the potential of an old formula in the hands of a clever and sensitive filmmaker, transcending the limits of melodrama. It opts for simple entertainment, avoiding emotional traps, and it also pays tribute to primeval cultures, when one compares the rigid "occidental" debarkation of Ada and her daughter Flora in New Zealand, to the beautiful Maori farewell ritual in the conclusion.