In 1981, Jane Campion watched a teenager perform at the Phillip Street Theatre in Sydney, Australia; the director immediately wanted to cast the young actress in her graduation film. Unfortunately, the headmistress at the all-girls North Sidney High School would not give her pupil the time off to work on the project. Not discouraged, Campion gave Nicole Kidman (The Hours) a keepsake – a postcard with the written words, “I want to direct you in something classical.” When she heard that the filmmaker was going to adapt the Henry James novel, The Portrait of a Lady (1996), Kidman sought out Campion with the intention of having the promise fulfilled. “She came to the flat, and we couldn’t take our eyes off her,” recalled the director. “She was very bold with us, and very sweet, wanting to discuss with us the whole book and at the same time blushing and feeling a little awkward. She was bold and unsure at the same time.”
Offered a role by Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting), who needed a replacement for Meg Ryan (Sleepless in Seattle), Nicole Kidman went onto star in To Die For (1995). Fearing that the Hollywood experience had corrupted her talent, Jane Campion made a decision which Kidman took to be an act of disloyalty; the Australian-raised performer would have to audition for the part of Isabel Archer. “I had just enough doubts that I thought the only way to sort it out was to try it out,” explained Campion.With her temper and emotions running high, Nicole Kidman auditioned for the role. “I saw her becoming very intuitive with her work,” recollected the filmmaker, “willing to go places I hadn’t imagined before.” Kidman remembered a phone call she received two days later from Campion. “She said, ‘You’re my Isabel. There’s nobody else I would want to play this character.’ I said thank you, but also started crying. And then, it was very daunting, because it was like, ‘O.K., we know we’re going to work together.’”
To get herself in the proper onscreen mood, Nicole Kidman incorporated some method-acting techniques. “We got the corset down to nineteen inches one day and I would be in pain and have bruises and stuff on my body when I took it off. But it was a psychological thing, a thing where I wanted to be restricted really, really tight so that the more repressed I was, the more I felt it.”
A veteran American actress wanted to play the manipulative Madame Merle but the character had already been cast with Susan Sarandon (Dead Man Walking). “Knowing that someone else has the role is treacherous,” observed Barbara Hershey (Hannah and Her Sisters), who persuaded the director to allow her to read two scenes while they were both in Los Angeles. “It was great,” marveled Jane Campion. “Barbara has an intensity you can never create; you either have it or you don’t. She’s slinky and feline. I love her black cat looks, and there was a temporal thing too. Some people are poised at a point in their lives to put everything they have into their work. That was a plus with Barbara. For instance, some women who have more attention in their careers would not know how it was to play second place and bide their time the way Madame Merle has to. I think Barbara knows those things.” Hershey’s ambition became a reality.
Though the movie is a faithful adaptation, controversy erupted over the additional sequence of Isabel having an erotic fantasy involving all of her suitors. Critically overshadowed by The Piano, The Portrait of a Lady did receive Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress (Barbara Hershey) and Best Costume Design.
Reuniting with Harvey Keitel, Jane Campion produced Holy Smoke! (1999) in which he stars as P.J. Waters, an American living in Australia who specializes in deprogramming members of religious cults. When Waters falls for a patient, Ruth Barron (Kate Winslet), he finds himself losing all sense of control.“I loved the script, I loved the character, I admire Jane Campion, I wanted to do it with Harvey Keitel, and fundamentally I thought the story was incredibly interesting and really, really brave,” remarked Kate Winslet (Little Children) of the movie which the director co-wrote with her sister Anna Campion. “I think more and more people these days go for the safe option in filmmaking. Holy Smoke! is very brave because I don’t think it’s easy to watch.” Winslet went on to add, “It’s a deep psychological story in the sense that you have to understand what’s going on inside these people’s heads as well as the relationship they are starting to form. I think Ruth wants to give him the reality check that he wants to give her. There are times when you think, ‘God, you manipulative cow.’ At the same time you sort of love her.”
There was no doubt in Jane Campion’s mind that she had found her leading lady, “I felt pretty clearly, as soon as I saw her, that she was the right girl. Kate was very determined. She had done her homework. She had already worked on her Australian accent; she knew the lines for her audition. She wanted to do it, that’s what I felt. She knew the girl. In her heart, she felt she knew Ruth.”
Whereas the tale garnered mixed reactions, the cinematography received universal praise. “Holy Smoke! has a sensual allure that transcends its deep-seated ponderousness,” wrote Janet Maslin in The New York Times. “The richly coloured Indian scenes have a hallucinogenic magic, while exquisite desert vistas radiate an attunement with the nature.” Film critic David Rooney from Variety declared, “Original in every sense, this often difficult film about family, relationships, sexual politics, spiritual questing, faith and obsession further explores the director’s abiding fascinations in excitingly unconventional terms.” At the Venice Film Festival, Jane Campion and Kate Winslet won the Elvira Notari Prize for Best Director and Best Actress while Campion also received a nomination for the Golden Lion.
Taking on the role of producer Nicole Kidman purchased the film rights for In the Cut (2003) which was written by novelist Susanna Moore. Kidman’s plans to star in the picture were derailed when she became embroiled in divorce proceedings with her actor husband Tom Cruise. Cast to replace the Hawaiian-born performer was Meg Ryan, who was seeking an opportunity to move beyond her romantic comedy persona.Trouble ensued; the original financial backers left when they learned that the erotic thriller was not going to be in the grisly vein of Se7en (1995) but instead was to be a “relationship-based story”. A lonely high school English teacher (Meg Ryan) has a sordid affair with a tough homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) who may or may not be a serial killer. “I think of my heroines as going into the underworld in a struggle to make sense of their lives,” remarked Campion. “I think the real danger is in playing safe and avoiding the truth of your imagination in your art and in your life.” Midst the dark subject matter the filmmaker found a timely tale. “Women today are dealing with both their independence and the fact that their lives are built around finding and satisfying the romantic models we grew up with. The story gave us an opportunity to see how that model falls short for us, and creates enormous amounts of grief.”
More known for its nudity and sex scenes, In the Cut failed to capture the imagination of movie audiences or film critics. A.O. Scott wrote in The New York Times, “The story turns out to be fairly conventional, with an ending that is a stale pretzel bowl of surprise twists; the psychology of the characters can be frustratingly obscure, but there are nonetheless images and ideas that stick like splinters under your skin.”
Joining a group of eight directors, which included Robert Altman (Gosford Park) and Jodie Foster (Little Man Tate), the New Zealand moviemaker took part in a United Nations sponsored project called 8 (2006). Jane Campion’s contribution, The Water Diary, is about two young girls struggling to survive in a drought-stricken Australian Outback. “One day I heard them [her daughter and her friends] talking about the world they would inherit and how our generation had used up so much of the resources,” revealed Campion on the origins of the short film.
Participating in another multi-filmmaker collaboration, the director produced Lady Bug (2007). A woman dressed as an insect tries to extend her wings while dancing on stage only to have her ambitions squashed by an annoyed cleaner. The picture was included in a series of short films called Chacun son cinema (To Each His Own Cinema); the anthology was also screened at the Cannes Film Festival. In explaining her absence from directing feature length movies, Jane Campion said, “I could afford to. And I actually asked myself whether I wanted to keep making films, or whether I’ve said what I needed to say.”
To create her latest film Bright Star (2009), Jane Campion had to overcome a natural dislike for a particular style of writing. “I had a mental problem, an aversion to poetry. It goes back decades.” The major source material for the director was a book authored by Andrew Motion about English poet John Keats. “[In] the last three years of his [Keats] life, he’d fallen in love with his neighbour, Fanny Brawne. I had no idea how intense this love story was, or about the letters that documented it. Those thirty-three letters take you right to the heart of this great love affair. I was moved deeply by the tragedy of it all.”When asked about her attraction to shooting period pictures, Jane Campion responded, “You do a contemporary film and you think you’ve already done your research. But in a way, that life we live in contemporary time is unexamined. So research you do into, say, the 1820s makes you pay attention to everything that surrounds your characters. Some things don’t exist anymore, some you have to build. Every piece of paper, every article of clothing, is different.” Despite the time gap, the director believes artists like John Keats had contemporary sensibilities. “The Romantics were called “romantics” because they were rebels against the status quo in a pretty important way. At that time, life and love itself were so unfair, so removed from what we know today. Every advantage went to the upper classes. Society was very staid. You couldn’t marry for love. Money meant everything. Many people left England because they felt they didn’t have a chance there.” Campion explained further, “These poets were speaking out and acting out against that. They were saying, ‘There’s one set of laws, society’s laws, and then there’s my gut, my instinct.’ And these poets said, ‘There’s more important things to worry about than etiquette, class, rituals.’ That’s why they seem [to be] so modern. That’s why we respond to them today.”
There was another reason Jane Campion was drawn to the short-lived romance. “What I loved so much about this story is its purity and innocence. It’s such a rare thing these days. Also, the poetry, a lost art which, hopefully, we’ve given a moment. It felt like it was about things I want to know about life. It’s not fashionable, but it seemed to feed me in the way I wanted to be fed.” The director is not concerned about the absence of a certain element in the relationship between the poet and his muse. “The chaste aspect of Fanny’s romance with Keats is not a big deal. It brings a fresh and original quality. You know, sex is actually not so original as the way people love or the stories behind each relationship, which is what you remember. Sex is sex in the end.”
Starring Ben Whishaw (My Brother Tom) and Abbie Cornish (Somersault) as the doomed lovers, Bright Star is a major contender for Best Picture at the next Academy Awards. When the picture was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, it found an unlikely admirer, someone known for creating movies filled with poetic violence and monologues. “I’m not really into poetry,” responded Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction). “But the movie made me think about taking a poetry class. One of the best things that can happen from a movie about an author is that you actually want to read their work.”
Declared by The New York Times to be “one of modern cinema’s great explorers of female sexuality,” Jane Campion stated, “I think most women are love addicts. We’re brought up in this culture to be such, and we believe we’re going to get fulfilled through being seen intimately by a man. But it’s just not true.” Campion is disappointed by the number of female directors receiving international recognition and support. “I would love to see more women directors because they represent half of the population and give birth to the whole world. Without them the rest of the world is not getting to know the whole story.” The New Zealander admires the work of Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career), Alison Mclean (Crush), Niki Caro (Whale Rider), and Sally Potter (Orlando). As for recent movies helmed by her feminine counterparts, the filmmaker enjoyed Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen (2003) and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008) [read a profile on Kathryn Bigelow here].
Jane Campion watches The Godfather (1972) annually and has a deep affinity for the Seven Samurai (1954). “I like to see this film once every few years,” remarked the director of the Akira Kurosawa classic. “I love it for its balance of humour, drama, and its deep affection for our noble and flawed natures. When I remember the film I smile and enjoy very much the breadth of the characters, all the beautiful courageous, broken and romantic samurai. I too want to be one of those samurai, and I want to make such a strong and kind film.”
Eyeing Alice Munro’s short story Runaway as her next cinematic project, Jane Campion finds herself improving as a filmmaker. “When you’re a bit younger, you want to show off and impress or shock or be provocative. You don’t have the confidence to take your time. The change is in my own heart and body. You’ve got to find it in your body to become slow.” Campion also believes, “The [more] sober and objective you are [in telling a story], the greater is the possibility of a good result.”
Read Jane Campion's Top 9 Criterion films, or watch the trailer for her latest feature Bright Star.
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.
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