January 14, 1997
NEW YORK -- Try to get high-falutin' with Oscar-winning director Jane Campion, and she'll quickly bring you down to earth.
For instance, ask the 43-year-old New Zealand-born filmmaker what gets the creative artist in her going in the morning, and she quickly becomes self-effacing.
"It's probably breakfast," says Campion smiling slightly at her anti-artsy, just-folks gesture.
But seriously? "At the moment," she adds, "it's my daughter."
The toddler is the love of her life, and the focus of her energy - her 12-day-old son died in 1993 - even when Campion was hard at work on location in England and Italy for her movie version of Henry James' The Portrait Of A Lady. It opens Friday in Toronto.
The film stars Nicole Kidman as the American lady looking for love - but finding emotional disaster - in Europe. The cast also includes John Malkovich, Barbara Hershey, Martin Donovan, Mary-Louise Parker, Shelley Duvall and Shelley Winters.
Typically, Portrait is a Campion movie. Just as The Piano - which earned her a director Oscar - contained her distinguishing moody movie moves, the brooding Portrait focuses more on the lady's bad choice in a relationship.
But don't call Campion's knack for melancholia a New Zealand trademark. "Good gawd," she says, "talk like that is such foolishness."
One of Campion's characteristics she will acknowledge is her chance-taking, which is front and centre in Portrait.
In fact, the director introduces the film of a 19th century anti-love story with a peculiar kind of 20th century opening, where voice-overs from modern-day women talk about living and loving.
"They are 20- or 21-year-old girls," Campion reports. "It was one of those flashes that I had. I just felt I wanted to have the romantic hopes of these young women in the movie. I was also trying to be loose and modern, without encroaching too much on James.
"Luckily," continues Campion, "we didn't have to worry about Henry James having a problem with the rewrite."
On the other hand, Campion did have a problem early on with a competing Merchant-Ivory production of The Portrait Of A Lady.
"I hated that race against time," she recalls. "And I wasn't going to proceed."
Most assumed that Campion's feisty, never-give-up stubbornness took over and won out, but she's quick to clarify.
"Nicole called me, and said, `I don't think Merchant-Ivory could do the version you could.' I was flattered by her gutsy attitude. So I proceeded, and I think we wound up scaring Merchant-Ivory off."
Campion chuckles. "Then I made Nicole audition for the role," she says devilishy. "I gave her the role, then took it back for a bit."
Only a cheeky Jane Campion could get away with that.
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