FilmJuiceTOP OF THE LAKE
DVD RELEASE: 12th August 2013
AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD NOW
From Oscar® winning writer/director Jane Campion and the Oscar® winning producers of The King’s Speech, Top of the Lake is a powerful and haunting mystery story set at the edge of the world starring Elisabeth Moss, David Wenham, Peter Mullan and Holly Hunter.
Top of the Lake begins with a mystery – a 12 year old girl walks chest deep into the freezing waters of a South Island lake in New Zealand. The girl is Tui Mitcham, daughter of the local drug lord, Matt Mitcham and his third wife, a Thai barmaid. The girl is discovered to be five months pregnant and won’t say who the father is. Then she disappears.
Robin Griffin is a gutsy but inexperienced detective called in to investigate Tui’s case. But as Robin becomes more and more obsessed with the search for Tui, and questions more of the town’s inhabitants, she slowly begins to realise that finding Tui is tantamount to finding herself – a self she has kept well hidden.
Tui’s story brings two men back into Robin’s life. Johnno, Matt Mitcham’s son, is an old boyfriend and a reformed criminal who has spent time in a Thai prison for drug offences. Al Parker is a fellow detective and mentor, who has known Robin and her family for a long time. As Robin finds out more about Tui, her world starts to unravel as she uncovers secrets about her own past.
The unusual texture of this world is the women’s camp at Paradise, a tribe of forgotten, invisible women, 45 and over, broken-down, disillusioned. At the group’s centre is GJ (pronounced Gee-Jay) 60-plus with bum-length silver hair and an electric detached air. GJ’s brand of kindness is bracing, aimed at cutting through delusions but somehow her harsh proselytizing soothes like a full stop.
Set against one of the most amazing and untouched landscapes left on the planet – a vast, varied terrain, unpopulated, moody, pure and remote where honest work is hard to find – Top of the Lake is a powerful and haunting story about our search for happiness where the dream of paradise attracts its dark twin, the fall.
