BSA 206 W3 : Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola

Today in class we looked at some prominent female directors, both of whom take very stylistic and artistic approaches to their work.

I am more familiar with Coppola because of her film Lost in Translation, which I have seen and remember greatly enjoying, and Campion is very well known as one of the big NZ directors, up there with the old Taika and Peter Jackson.

Jane Campion

Her most famous film is The Piano, which was nominated for Best Picture and won things at Cannes. I haven't seen it, but it's a really big NZ film and is even set here.

A mute woman is sent to 1850s New Zealand along with her young daughter and prized piano for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner but is soon lusted after by a local worker on the plantation.



Her career has seen more stories set in New Zealand, like the TV drama Top of the Lake.

The woman has a style and way of telling her stories that makes her work stand distinct from contemporaries. A major factor in her separation from the crowd is the ambiguousness present in her work. This is demonstrated in this short we watched in class:

Sofia Coppola



Obviously most well known for Lost in Translation we watched a bunch of trailers of her work:



The trailers are often misleading of the final product, in this example I think it was worth it, the content is the same in the film but presented in a more high strung and quick cutting fashion (closer to that of the average rom-com) whereas the film itself is much more restrained and slowly paced. I think it's worth the audience manipulation because the film wouldn't sell as well if advertised for what it actually is, but the film is very good and people are bound to still enjoy the experience even if it stands apart from its peers.



This film did something interesting with the period piece, putting a modern filmmaking spin to it. Represented as if it was made today and not in the classical Hollywood period as it is common for films set during this time. It's a deliberate contrast that I think makes it more interesting, other directors have done this as well and I find myself always very intrigued to see how they go about it. One example I can think of is Guy Ritchie's King Arthur, which played more like one of his modern gangster flicks than medieval fantasy.



Strangely in a different direction, this movie (which we watched in class) feels very traditional in its technique. We watched it in class and one thing I can definitely say is consistent of her films (even if none have recaptured the peculiar singularity of Lost in Translation) is that they are all visually stunning.