Jane Campion, who is the favorite director at the 2022 Oscars

She is the filmmaker of records: Jane Campion, 67, from New Zealander, former Academy Award winner for the original screenplay by Piano lessonsreturns after almost thirty years to dominate the ranking of favorites at the 2022 Academy Awards with The power of the dog (on Netflix, after the preview at Venice Film Festival which earned her the Silver Lion for directing). She so far she is the only woman in the history of Cannes Film Festival to have earned the Palme d’Or.

Not that surprising, mind you: he has creativity in his blood thanks to his parents, both theatrical artists. Cosmopolitan estheteshe was just a student at film school when she made the short Peel which won Cannes. She has always staged a multifaceted and three-dimensional female universe, far from clichés but often harassed by oppressive and tyrannical male forces. It is no exception The power of the dog that unravels his worldview to perfection.

Shot in the homeland, among the boundless silent and solitary expanses, it rewrites the feelings drawing on the chromatic harmony of the naturalistic frames. Its composition is like a painting, but in motion. And the charismatic charm it exerts manages to be sensual but never explicit. In one scene, the protagonist Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), a rude ranchero, takes a bath, dressed, in a stream. Here, in an almost dreamlike sequence, he takes a scarf out of his trouser pocket and lays it on the body with a delicacy that contrasts with his rough manner. At times it seems that his skin makes love to that piece of cloth, but with such disarming vulnerability as to take your breath away. Yes, here too toxic masculinity returns as the fil rouge of the narrative. There is talk of abuse, psychological violence, distressing compromises, in a crumbling of the feminine dignity, increasingly eroded by oppression and impotence.

With a distinctly personal touch, Jane Campion has been able to stage a modern reality, despite being light years away from the viewer’s experience. With a cadenced, calibrated and diluted rhythm, she takes the audience by the hand, stopping time. This absolute suspension – and not just disbelief – opens the doors to unprecedented panoramas, which the Time it approaches the “majesty of the open sky”. For USA Today the greatest merit of this film is that of being «exploration of the male ego» but with «such and many facets as to keep the attention high until the end». THEL New York Times applauds its “visual majesty”the Washington Post speaks of “superb control of one’s art”, however The Guardian remains one of the director’s best works, while the Los Angeles Times he praises not only the painstaking meticulousness of the details but “the deeply satisfying epilogue”. In fact, it makes him here the BBC“The plot isn’t clear until the final scene and it’s worth the wait.” Hollywood Reporter he was kidnapped by “notes of melancholy, loneliness, torment, jealousy and resentment”.

That’s why the Campion plays a perfectly crafted melody with exceptional mastery and deserves a place of honor among filmmakers of great depth. With her in contention for the Oscar as best recorder we find Steven Spielberg (West Side Story), Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza), Kenneth Branagh (Belfast) and the Japanese Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive my car).

Who has seen her shaping icons like Nicole Kidman on the big screen (Portrait of a lady) and on the small (Top of the Lake) knows perfectly well that this filmmaker it is at the height of its artistic expression and tapped into the pandemic drift to re-emerge with enhanced force. It could really be a ripe opportunity to be understood, read, and tasted by Hollywood not as an outsider but as an authoritative voice on the global cinema scene.

It shows that even the bravest women, when they raise their voices, risk making mistakes but then apologize. Recently, in fact, during a speech of thanks to the Critics Choice Awardsquoted the strong women in the room telling sisters Serena and Venus Williams (present to support Will Smith, who plays their father in the biopic A winning family: “You are wonderful. In any case, you have never played against the males, as I did ». The unfortunate comment led to an almost immediate apology statement, with compliments profusely on the two exceptional athletes. The episode makes her even more exquisitely human, because when you have a stage in front of you, only those who dare are wrong.