This six-hour film marked Jane Campion as a truly extraordinary
director, emerging from the cinematic backwater of New Zealand.
Adapted from Janet Frame's autobiography of the same name, the film
charts the evolution of the writer who spent much of her adolescence and
womanhood in various primitive mental institutions. The horror of
these facilities and the richness of Janet's inner world are portrayed
equally vividly, and Campion wins a dazzling continuity from the three
actresses who play Janet as a child, teenager and woman.
