Plot summary

Life is not kind to little Janet Frame. She is an outsider at school and poverty reigns at home in the large family. Her brother suffers from epileptic seizures and her eldest sister dies in a swimming accident. Early on, the chubby redhead creates a counter-world of fairy tales for herself, and Janet owes her survival to this magical fantasy. This is where she will take refuge when later, in a panic, she drops out of her teacher training course and, after a suicide attempt, is admitted to a mental hospital. After eight years of fear and torment, she is released and gets to know Europe during a literary scholarship. After her father's death, she returns to New Zealand and becomes the most famous writer in her home country. Jane Campion describes the painful path of a woman's coming of age, who sees herself as an outsider from an early age. Strange in everyday life and supposedly ugly, Janet develops a special view of the world at an early age. Jane Campion succeeds in depicting this view, in making the perception of a child's fantasy visible through the camera, with seemingly simple means. She carefully strings together the small tragedies of a difficult childhood, always with an eye for the absurd comedy hidden in the small scenes of everyday life. No desperate cry for freedom is raised, but the desire noticeably permeates life stage after life stage until the path is fought free via literature.