People still hold The Piano in high regard. I find her poorly executed concepts to be among the worst of the 90's crop of filmmakers. We around here barely mention Neil Jordon, but he's far more talented than Campion. The fact that she's been abe to make as many movies as she has and draw such talent speaks of the regard the film community hold her in. She's even less interesting than Catherine Breillat who I also don't care for. But Breillat doesn't pretend to be so much more than she is.
So it's essentially just
The Piano that you find overrated then?
It's not clear to me what you mean by poorly executed concepts - could you give me a bit more than that? I'd agree that something like
Holy Smoke wasn't as good as the idea that seemed to be behind it - but that's the only one I can see that would fit your description. (And I know flieger disagrees with me on
HS.
)
I'm not exactly sure what Jordon has to do with Campion being overrated . . . ? Plenty of great directors are rarely, if ever, mentioned around here, and I find it odd that you'd begrudge Campion the few mentions she gets because a particular director you like doesn't get as much attention as she? Practically any director might be described as overrated by that standard of measurement.
But I think I understand - I, personally, was more irritated by the orgiastic ecstasies over Tarantino's terd than I would have been had I not thought
Bright Star deserved more attention.
Is she able to make a lot of movies? Her output doesn't really seem like all that much to me - 8 feature films or so?
And to your last comment - you find her pretentious - is that what you mean there? I find that really odd - my feeling about her and her films comes down to quite the opposite! I loved her
interview on The Treatment a while back - she sounded as wonderfully modest and unassuming as I expected to her to based on her films. I kind of fell in love with her.