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Campion, presenting her new film "The Power of
The Dog" at the Venice festival on Thursday, pointed to
colleagues Chloe Zhao - whose "Nomadland" won the top prize in
Venice last year and went on to fetch three Oscars - and this
year's Cannes winner Julia Ducournau.
"The girls are doing very well," Campion, the first female
director to receive the Palme D'Or in Cannes for her 1993 film
"The Piano", told reporters.
"All I can say is that, since the #MeToo movement happened, I
feel a change in the weather. It's like the Berlin wall coming
down or the end of apartheid for us women."
Campion, 67, picked a tale of machismo and revenge set in 1925
Montana and based on a novel by Thomas Savage for her first film
since "Bright Star", a 2009 biographical drama about poet John
Keats, and several years spent working on a TV series.
"The Power of The Dog", shot entirely in Campion's native New
Zealand, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank, a cruel,
twisted ranch owner who sets out to torment Rose, the new wife
of his brother, together with her bookish son.
Cumberbatch said the toxic attitude of his character towards
Rose, played by Kirsten Dunst, was a product of his upbringing
as well as his fear of losing out once she comes to live in the
family ranch.
He said that while shooting he had completely immersed himself
in his character. He and Dunst - whose role is amplified in the
film compared to the book - barely greeted each other on set to
keep with the tense, antagonistic atmosphere that pervades the
movie.
"Benedict and I didn't talk to each other on set at all. We
always felt guilty if we were like, 'Hi, Hi', we kept our
distance," Dunst said.
Campion's film, which was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic,
is one of two titles produced by Netflix in the main competition
line-up in Venice, together with Paolo Sorrentino's "The Hand of
God".
Both had been invited to the Cannes festival but opted instead
for Venice, which unlike its French rival does not demand a
theatrical release for films vying for the top prize. The
festival ends on Sept. 11.
(additional reporting by Hanna Rantala, Editing by William
Maclean)
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