Sad Girl Cinema Club: The Piano

Holly Hunter’s ultimate mute sad girl performance won her a much deserved Oscar THE PIANO centers on a mute Scottish woman, Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), who is shipped off to rural New Zealand to marry settler Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill). She travels with the two most important things in her life: her out-of-wedlock daughter (Anna Paquin) and the ornate piano she uses to express her feelings through. When her new husband sells her piano to a frontiersman (Harvey Keitel), Ada finds herself in an unexpected affair that leads to dark consequences. THE PIANO earned three Academy Awards: one for Hunter, one for Paquin, and one for Jane Campion (THE POWER OF THE DOG) for best screenplay. A gentle but sometimes harsh film, THE PIANO is a stunning, complex romance not unlike WUTHERING HEIGHTS. It feels deeply rooted in its time period and organic in its storytelling. Keitel and Hunter’s chemistr