I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I'm not willing to give Jane Campion another chance.Anyone capable of making 'The Piano' and 'Holy Smoke' cannot be forgiven. She's had her 15 minutes. In fact she's had more than her fair share of ever being heard of.Australia has a bad problem (Campion was a New Zealander but lives in Oz now) - it's called 'The Arts Council', even though that name is out of date.We are still so utterly desperate to make ourselves regarded as literati rather than dusty farmers, that instead of funding or supporting our real writers, producers and artists, we consistently push money into pretentious, shallow, valueless garbage, produced by people 'on the circuit'.Like Jane bloody Campion.

In the ambitious follow-up to her celebrated debut feature 'Sweetie' Jane Campion presents yet another social misfit at odds with an unsympathetic world, drawing her inspiration this time from the autobiography of Janet Frame, a New Zealand writer who suffered eight years of electro-shock therapy after being misdiagnosed for schizophrenia. The film is structured in the form of a triptych, with the best moments (perhaps not surprisingly) all clustered in the first episode, showing the young Frame's childhood in a poor but literate household, always at the mercy of adult authority: teachers, doctors, and so forth. These early scenes aren't exactly meant to set a cheerful mood, but they look positively giddy compared to the rest of the film, the length of which eventually overwhelms its subject: watching the drab and lonely life of a painfully shy, pathetically insecure, repressed and introverted writer unfold over 158 minutes can be an oppressive experience. Campion's unique visual style is never less than interesting, but her technique of using sudden blackouts to separate short, seemingly unrelated fragments of narrative memory only underscores the difficulty of capturing on film the creative process of a writer.

I loved this movie! i saw it in 1991 in Amsterdam while on vacation in a little dingy movie house that sold beer and it had dutch subtitles so it was quite an emotional and memorable feeling all the way around. I remember falling in love with everything about it. so heart wrenching. Some of the best acting i have ever seen.All of the performances are amazing, but Kerry Fox should have won an Oscar! She was nothing short of brilliant. The little chubby red head girl (Alexia Keogh) was also outstanding and i was surprised no, shocked seeing she has no other credits on IMDb. She was better than any child star working in Hollywood today.There are moments in the film that transcend motion picture film-making. Jane Campion is a serious artist as was Frame and it's truly a shame that so few people seem to know about it judging from the few user comments. I consider this film true cinematic art. I remember leaving the theater with my friend and not being able to speak it moved us so much. It haunted me in a way no film ever has before. Maybe it was being in Amserdam? Maybe it was the beer? No, it was the film.

Oddly enough this is my favorite Jane Campion film. It's simply told, and the Janet Frame story comes through clearly, not with the rawness or complexity of Janet Frame's writing, but still with an honesty and beauty that is a part of what's best about great New Zealand film-making. Grant Major (Lord of the Rings) also did the design and visually it's a great reflection of what New Zealand of a certain time was like. But basically it's the story that's remarkable, dealing with how society treats the insane (it's probably a precursor and better version of Girl Interrupted), and how artists and writers find themselves.