It seems shrewdly appropriate that director Julie Bertuccelli’s documentary Jane Campion, The Cinema Woman should have its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Classics section. Not only does it highlight the importance the festival has played in her illustrious career, but it also reinforces the challenges women still Face in terms of making films in an industry historically dominated by men.
The film opens with footage of Cannes’ 60th birthday events back in 2007, as 35 Palme d’Or winners gather on the Cannes red carpet. What is blindingly clear is that Campion is the only woman amongst the gathering of filmmakers. In an associated press conference she was asked how it felt to be the only woman amongst those male directors, and said, “it is a reflection of how things are right now sadly. The feminine is such a strong and important aspect to our humanity. We are goddesses…we are beautiful…we are intuitive…we are nurturing.”
The archive footage pans across the roster of male directors sitting impassively, as she adds how ”so much of the media, or the way we see the world, is written and thought of by men that we really don’t know how women think.”
This impressively assembled archive-driven film subtly features a montage of footage from her own films and proceeds to tell the story of a deeply impressive career in essentially chronological order, blending footage material from her film sets alongside interviews recorded with her over the years. The story is one of a determined talent fighting to find her unique voice, battling at times within (and against) a patronising male film culture and ultimately making powerful and individual films that have struck a chord with audiences around the world.
Campion talks about her childhood. Hers was a theatre-oriented family where her father was a director and her mother an actress and her “family treated Shakespeare like it was the bible.” School was a trial from which she rebelled to study the “serious subject” of anthropology, before ultimately going to art school and discovering a Super 8 camera. “I borrowed the camera and manual and just worked it out,” she recalled.
She made short films that left her tutors unimpressed until, to her surprise, her short Peel (1982) was invited to screen at Cannes and to her even greater amazement won the short film Palme d’Or. After more shorts, her first theatrical feature was Sweetie (1989) which, she conceded, “looks like a couple of Martians made a film.” Of the film crew she is brutally frank. “Of course I had my usual problem with technicians in the beginning who were extremely rude – I mean unbelievably rude. But I didn’t like them so I didn’t care – I was the director. I was going to do it my way.” The film screened at Cannes where she recalled the sound of seats flipping up as some of the audience left the screening.
She admits her big step up was making The Piano (1993), with its bigger budget, staging and level of cast that included Harvey Keitel, Holly Hunter, Sam Neill and a young Anna Paquin. “I didn’t know if I could manage him (Harvey Keitel)” she said, “So I rang him up and said ‘Harvey I’ve hardly done any work, how are we going to manage this’. He said, ‘you let me let see what I think would work and after that I will try anything.’” She added: ”Trust grows slowly.”
She arrived in Cannes with the film a hot contender (which she admits caused even more anxiety) and found the pressure and media work difficult given that she was heavily pregnant. When she became the first woman to a Palme d’Or for best film, the award was accepted by Sam Neill as she was due to give birth. She sadly recalls: “The baby died 10 days after birth…at the time when I had greatest success I had my greatest grief. I was really a mess – it took me 10 years to realise it was good to get the Palme d’Or.”
The documentary charts her work with The Portrait of a Lady (1990); Holy Smoke (1999); In The Cut (2003); Bright Star(2009) and the television series Top of the Lake (2013-17) before ending with coverage of her Oscar-winning The Power of the Dog (2021). She admits that she fell in love with the 1967 source novel by Thomas Savage, loving the connection the characters had to nature (a theme in many of her films) and concedes that as an artist she “can’t be a pleaser and a filmmaker.”
The film closes with her admitting – after a 40-year career – that she has seen changes in the film business for women filmmakers, despite only being the third woman to win a Best Director Oscar (for The Power of the Do
g). Julie Bertuccelli’s film is a charming and enthralling journey through a fascinating career, packed with frank and insightful archive interviews and deservedly shining the spotlight on a sometimes misunderstood talent.
France, 2022, 98mins
Dir: Julie Bertuccelli
Production: Les Films du Poisson, ARTE France
International sales: West End Films / Cinephil
Producer: Estelle Fialon
Editors: Laure Gardette, Svetlan Vaynblat
Music: Olivier Goinard
