SOURCE: Review of The Piano, in The Nation, New York, Vol. 257, No. 19, December 6, 1993, pp. 704-06.

In the following mixed review, Klawans finds The Piano contrived and allegorized, but acknowledges that most viewers will admire the film's eroticism and formal inventiveness.

A skeptic's notes on the most believed-in movie of the year:

No one will deny that Jane Campion's The Piano is a genuinely erotic picture. That alone would have made it stand out in any era; it glows all the brighter today, when screen couplings resemble either the Clash of the Titans (Basic Instinct) or a perfume ad (Henry and June). What a stimulus, what a relief, to see Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel get naked in The Piano, in a scene with both heat and moisture; what delicious suspense later on, when Hunter explores the skittish body of Sam Neill. Poems will soon be written about the...