Plot

This sprawling, detailed film by Jane Campion (THE PIANO) tells the true story of Janet Frame, a painfully sensitive girl who managed to escape a dreary rural upbringing and eight years in a mental hospital to become New Zealand's premier poet. The film unfolds as a trilogy, with each section based on a different Frame autobiography. "To the Is-Land" chronicles her childhood and awkward teenage years. "An Angel at My Table" focuses on her time as a teacher and her horrifying mental institution experience. "The Envoy from Mirror City" finds Frame an emerging, critically lauded writer traveling on a grant in Europe and finding love for the first time.

Kerry Fox, as the adult Frame, is astonishing. She transmits painfully self-aware shyness until it rubs off on the viewer. Campion expertly captures the details of Frame's time and place, creating a brutal, impersonal world by turns unremittingly dreary and starkly beautiful. Stunning, exhausting, brilliant, this acclaimed film debuted on New Zealand TV as a miniseries and was later edited for feature-length release internationally.