It's a biopic about Janet Frame (1924-2004), a literary star from New Zealand. It's based on Frame's three-volume autobiography and was originally aired as a three-part television series in New Zealand. The film covers her life for the years from about 1930 to the early 1960s.
Janet Frame (Alexia Keogh as a child, Karen Fergusson as a teenager, Kerry Fox as a young adult and adult) grows up in rural New Zealand as a middle child in an impoverished family. She is always "different." As a child, she is pudgy with uncontrollable red hair. She is very shy when away from her family but is loved within her family. Her father (Kevin J. Wilson) is sometimes a brute, especially with her older brother, who is an undiagnosed epileptic, but one senses Janet is a special favorite of his. The whole family loves reading, which nurtures her early literary efforts at writing poetry and such. However, she is very naive and blandly reports at the supper table one night that Myrtle (Melina Bemecker), her older sister, was f-----g the neighbor boy. Several years later, Myrtle dies in a drowning accident.
When Janet goes to college, her shyness becomes more intense, and she socializes with no one, even when joined by her sister, Isabel (Glynis Angell). Isabel also drowns accidentally. Janet takes a teaching position but again isolates herself and flees when a school inspector visits the class.
She begins eight years in and out of mental hospitals where she is badly diagnosed as schizophrenic and undergoes up to 200 electrical shock treatments. Somehow she writes a collection of short stories during this time that is published to great acclaim. This success saves her from a proposed lobotomy. Her literary success generates a grant to travel to Europe, where she spends the next season of her life.
Therapy helps her come to better terms with her psyche, and we learn she continues to be literarily productive, though only when she is alone. She finally has a long-desired love affair in London, England, with a cad from America, and is devastated when he leaves.
The film ends in the 1960s on her return to New Zealand. The final scene shows her dancing to Chubby Checker's "The Twist." Alone.
This was a very moving and straight-forward movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. It's filled with many short snippets of scenes. One reviewer described it very aptly as a diary. Each burst is like a paragraph entry in a diary related to a particular time and place but quickly moving on to the next time and place.
Janet Frame (Alexia Keogh as a child, Karen Fergusson as a teenager, Kerry Fox as a young adult and adult) grows up in rural New Zealand as a middle child in an impoverished family. She is always "different." As a child, she is pudgy with uncontrollable red hair. She is very shy when away from her family but is loved within her family. Her father (Kevin J. Wilson) is sometimes a brute, especially with her older brother, who is an undiagnosed epileptic, but one senses Janet is a special favorite of his. The whole family loves reading, which nurtures her early literary efforts at writing poetry and such. However, she is very naive and blandly reports at the supper table one night that Myrtle (Melina Bemecker), her older sister, was f-----g the neighbor boy. Several years later, Myrtle dies in a drowning accident.
When Janet goes to college, her shyness becomes more intense, and she socializes with no one, even when joined by her sister, Isabel (Glynis Angell). Isabel also drowns accidentally. Janet takes a teaching position but again isolates herself and flees when a school inspector visits the class.
She begins eight years in and out of mental hospitals where she is badly diagnosed as schizophrenic and undergoes up to 200 electrical shock treatments. Somehow she writes a collection of short stories during this time that is published to great acclaim. This success saves her from a proposed lobotomy. Her literary success generates a grant to travel to Europe, where she spends the next season of her life.
Therapy helps her come to better terms with her psyche, and we learn she continues to be literarily productive, though only when she is alone. She finally has a long-desired love affair in London, England, with a cad from America, and is devastated when he leaves.
The film ends in the 1960s on her return to New Zealand. The final scene shows her dancing to Chubby Checker's "The Twist." Alone.
This was a very moving and straight-forward movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. It's filled with many short snippets of scenes. One reviewer described it very aptly as a diary. Each burst is like a paragraph entry in a diary related to a particular time and place but quickly moving on to the next time and place.