SOURCE: Review of An Angel at My Table, in New Republic, Vol. 204, No. 3985, June 3, 1991, pp. 28-9.

In the following review, Kauffmann asserts that Campion "has moved forward healthily" with An Angel at My Table, eschewing the "precious camera work" of Sweetie to put "her (considerable) pictorial skill at the service of Janet Frame."

Last year, reviewing Jane Campion's Sweetie, I said, "If Campion can accept that we now know about her [pictorial] eye and can concentrate on an integrated story, she might make a good traditional filmmaker." She hadn't waited for my advice: she was already almost finished with Angel at My Table, which is traditional in approach, which employs her eye to present a narrative, and which is good.

Angel at My Table is a two-and-a-half-hour distillation, by the screenwriter Laura Jones, of Janet Frame's three volumes of autobiography. (The books are now available in one paperbound...