The Piano

The mute Scottish emigrant Ada (Holly Hunter) and her nine-year-old daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) have to wait all night in a lonely bay on the coast of New Zealand until the farmer Stewart (Sam Neill) picks them up. Ada's father has forced her to marry Stewart. Despite her pleading, Stewart leaves her piano, which serves as her voice, behind on the beach when he takes Ada and Flora to his rain forest estate. There, Baines (Harvey Keitel) is her neighbor, a secretive, idiosyncratic immigrant whose Maori tattoos on his face indicate that he lives between the world of bigoted white settlers and the uninhibited jungle existence of the natives. Unlike Ada's uptight husband, Baines quickly senses what the concert grand piano means to the young woman, takes possession of it, and suggests that she earn it back if she allows him to be affectionate with her.