In Search of the Lost Mother—The Piano (NZ, AU, F 1993)

The film is about the mute Ada who, at her father’s behest, is sent along with her daughter and her piano to a New Zealand colony to be married to a man she does not know. In the Victorian era, this seems to be the only way for a woman with an illegitimate child to still be accepted by a man. Her piano, with which she shares a deep passion and which also helps her to cope with an early trauma, becomes her voice, with which she can assert herself over men and assert herself.