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Top of the Lake
Jane Campion’s alternative TV miniseries heads to Sundance
The main event at January’s Sundance Film Festival may turn out not to be a movie at all, but Jane Campion’s six-part miniseries, “Top of the Lake.” Starring Elisabeth Moss and the Scottish actor Peter Mullan, the layered drama will screen just once in Park City, on Sunday, January 20, prior to airing on the Sundance Channel, which co-produced it with the BBC.
Working on separate episodes, Campion shared the directing duties with Garth Davis. The series, co-written by Campion and Gerard Lee, has been blurbed as follows: “’Top of the Lake’ is a powerful and haunting mystery about the search for happiness in a paradise where honest work is hard to find. Set in the remote mountains of New Zealand, the story follows the disappearance of a twelve-year-old, five-months pregnant, who was last seen standing chest deep in a frozen lake.
“Robin Griffin [Moss] is a gutsy but inexperienced detective called in to investigate [the girl’s] case. During the investigation, she collides with Matt Mitcham [Mullan], the missing girl’s father and local drug lord. Robin will find this the case that tests her limits and sends her on a journey of self-discovery.”
Holly Hunter (Campion’s “The Piano”), David Wenham (“The Lord of the Rings”) co-star. Lucy Lawless (“Xena,” “Spartacus”) appears in the first episode. It was photographed by Adam Arkapaw (the upcoming “Lore”).
What sounds on the surface a less perverse “Twin Peaks,” or a mystical “CSI,” is likely to require trenchant feminist analysis given the involvement of Campion, director of “An Angel at My Table,” “The Portrait of a Lady,” and “In the Cut,” as well as “The Piano.”
During an onstage interview at the Cannes TV market Mipcom in October, the Australian auteur noted that the series is thematically interested in “post-menopausal” over-40 women. As the Hollywood Reporter recorded it, “they are a ‘fascinating’ subset that no one is typically interested in dwelling on, she explained. The women are a self-contained counterpoint to the patriarchal structure surrounding them, and Holly Hunter is the central figure in their encampment.”
“We’re trying to go against the police procedural aesthetic,” co-writer Lee added. Campion said she was inspired to choose the long-form TV format after watching “Deadwood,” “Mad Men” (in which Moss plays Peggy Olson), and “The Killing.” She and Lee “determined there was ‘more freedom’ and ‘fewer restraints’ imposed upon creators nowadays in TV than in film.” The chorus agreeing with her on this — and television drama’s current supremacy over film drama — has grown exponentially in 2012.
Source: Blouin Artinfo
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