Word: ada
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...what does she feel? The viewer must translate the glances and cramped gestures of Ada's own aboriginal language. Sometimes her sideways stare says, "Men! Jeez!" and suggests the wry comedy The Piano could have been if it had not aimed higher. But mostly we see two eyeholes burning through the mask of civility to reveal raging helplessness -- until Ada finds hope in passion. Then she must face the prospects of Flora's betrayal, Stewart's rage, the loss of the piano, the sacrifice of limb and life...
...1850s, Ada (Hunter), a mute Scottish woman, comes to the voluptuously desolate New Zealand bush in an arranged marriage with Stewart (Neill), a landowner. Stewart cannot seduce a woman who can barely tolerate him and whose eyes burn with a fierce, almost feral obstinacy. What grievance has she against mankind, against men? And how can this crushing burden be eased...
...trying to crush her, Stewart decides. Ada has only two loves in this bleak world: her nine-year-old daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) and her piano. After Stewart cavalierly sells the instrument to his neighbor Baines (Keitel), Ada strikes a bargain with Baines. Under the guise of giving him lessons, she will buy the piano back from him, one black key at a time, by allowing certain sexual favors. One key is hers if she raises her skirt; two keys to let him touch her bare arm; five; 10 . . . Ada can win what she needs by meting out what...
Baines is illiterate but not ignorant. Watching Ada rapt at her piano, listening to the music with which she speaks, he can detect a passion in this woman that he too wants to play. He is not a fastidious wooer. He will smell her jacket, or investigate her stockings until he finds a tiny hole that reveals skin he can touch. Soon his mind is seized with Ada. After she leaves, Baines is haunted by the echo and odor of a tiny, sinewy woman who, because she seems to be pure will unadorned by coquetry, has sparked...
...without words, and the image of a man watching a woman. What is not traditional is that here the women are in charge, as heroine, star and director. The result is that what might have been art-house voyeurism becomes a wise sermon on the various motives for sex. Ada has sex with Stewart out of duty or pity. (The movie sees Stewart's pathos as well: as he watches lovers through a window, a dog licks his hand in a cruel parody of the affection he craves.) The sexual dance with Baines has more roiling complications. The first step...