From Jane Campion's early award-winning short films on through international sensation The Piano and beyond, Kathleen McHugh traces the director's distinctive visual style as well as her commitment to consistently renovating the conventions of "women's films." By refusing to position her female protagonists as victims, McHugh argues, Campion scrupulously avoids the moral structures of melodrama, and though she often works with the narratives, mise-en-scène, and visual tropes typical of that genre, her films instead invite a distanced or even amused engagement.
A volume in the series Contemporary Film Directors, edited by James R. Naremore