When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.0/10
IMDb: 7.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.85/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 90%
Metacritic: 89
TMDB: 7.4/10
Director
Jane Campion
Production
CiBy 2000, Jan Chapman Productions
Cast
Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin, Cliff Curtis, Kerry Walker, Ian Mune, Geneviève Lemon, Pete Smith, Bruce Allpress, Rose McIver, Verity George, Stephen Papps, Karen Colston, Eddie Campbell, Te Whatanui Skipwith, Tungia Baker, Neil Gudsell, Jon Sperry, Greg Mayor
Curator Review
Verdict
A formally striking, emotionally severe romance-drama that treats desire, power, and self-expression with unusual intensity. Its atmosphere, performances, and visual storytelling make it a standout even when its relationship dynamics remain deliberately unsettling.
Best for
viewers who like adult, psychologically charged romances
fans of lush period drama and strong visual composition
people interested in women-centered stories about autonomy and desire
audiences open to morally complicated relationships and ambiguous endings
Skip if
you want a straightforward love story
you dislike coercive or abusive relationship dynamics on screen
you prefer fast pacing or plot-heavy drama
you want a warm, cathartic romantic payoff
Overview
The Piano is one of those films where every element feels tuned to a single emotional frequency: desire, silence, control, and resistance. Jane Campion turns the New Zealand frontier into a pressure chamber, and Holly Hunter’s performance gives Ada a fierce interior life even when the character cannot speak it aloud. The result is both sensuous and severe, with images and music carrying as much meaning as dialogue ever could.
Worth noting
What makes the film linger is that it refuses to be simple about romance. It is a story about longing, but also about ownership, coercion, and the ways intimacy can be tangled with violence. That tension is part of why the film remains so discussed: it is beautiful, unsettling, and morally thorny in ways that invite argument rather than closure.
Bottom line
For viewers drawn to prestige melodrama with a sharp feminist edge, this is essential viewing. It is not an easy love story, but it is a memorable one, and one of the defining films of 1990s art-house cinema.
Top Letterboxd reviews
john (4★) · 3115 likes
bro, imagine raising a snitch
Patrick Willems (4.5★) · 2323 likes
I’m starting to think Harvey Keitel wasn’t serious about wanting to learn to play the piano
Sally Jane Black · 2056 likes
This film has the wrong ending. It was such a startlingly wrong ending that I looked it up to confirm--Campion herself has said she intended a different ending. While the film's wrong ending is fine, really, it seems tacked on. And while it conveys a certain sense of what the film is about, it muddles it slightly. What this film is about is a woman's passion, about her defining herself through something other than a man (namely, her piano), and… more This film has the wrong ending. It was such a startlingly wrong ending that I looked it up to confirm--Campion herself has said she intended a different ending. While the film's wrong ending is fine, really, it seems tacked on. And while it conveys a certain sense of what the film is about, it muddles it slightly. What this film is about is a woman's passion, about her defining herself through something other than a man (namely, her piano), and… more