A Study Of Narrative In Jane Campion’s Films

Jane Campion is one of the most famous female directors in the world.Her films mostly focus on women’s growth and resistance,desire and awakening,with exquisite emotions and profound artistic conception.This paper takes seven feature-length films directed by Jane Campion as the analysis object to study the narrative of Campion’s films.The study firstly reviews Campion’s family origin and educational background,to explore the influence of her early experiences on her view of film narrative.Next,the paper studies the narrative of Jane Campion’s films from two dimensions: "histoire" and "discourse".In the aspect of "histoire",the article starts from the perspectives of the characters and the themes,and finds that female characters are the eternal protagonists in Campion’s films.Female images can be divided into three categories: victims who suffer from physical trauma,opponents who occupy the sexual dominance,and leaders who suppress the male authority.The change of narrative theme in Campion’s films can be divided into three stages: self-mapping based on reality,social conflicts and struggles that women may experience,and constructing ideal world by eliminating external causes.In "discourse",the construction is based on the female gaze perspective,the poetical narrative space and time,and the technique of narrative theme hidden in images.Because of the mutual coordination and adaptation of "histoire" and "discourse",the narration of Campion’s film shows its poetry and originality.This paper aims to study Campion’s films from the perspective of narratology,in order to summarize the new ideas that feminist filmmakers can learn from.