Analysis Of Jane Campion's An Angel At My Table

Johnston clearly stipulates that feminist cinema is an alternative language against Hollywood movies in terms of production and content, and also it produces a different narrative and ideology against classical Hollywood dominant cinema (Johnston, 1979). Campion’s An Angel At My Table (1990) is an example of the female counter cinema aesthetic which also embodies the concept of essentialism.

Jane Campion was one of four female film directors to be nominated for the academy awards best director statue; this is substantial evidence in accrediting her 1990 film An Angel at My Table in highlighting the female subjectivity in film. Campion used the influential biography written by Janet Frame to portray the underlying realities in which women living with mental disorders must succumb too, due to the over bearing hegemony society that the world of Hollywood enforce upon its audience.

Before arguing on how the film takes a feminist counter cinema approach to addressing questions of female subjectivity and spectatorship in light of Gillet’s quote. I will firstly discuss the concept of feminism and female counter cinema focusing

This lay claim to the film’s success for being more than a film but a pinnacle for which emerging 21st century feminists could feel free to accept they imperfections to become perfect specimens of the 21st century. This was a necessary perspective shift at the time to allow Jane Campion to follow a road of success, in which she not only identified and the question of women subjectivity and spectatorship; but introduced a new niche of cinematic appreciation for years to come. This has seen further films excluding An Angel at My Table to question the gender inequality and objectification of the female spectator during an era of liberation and freedom with which American Hollywood-ism promoted due to collapse of the cold