HIGHLIGHTS Lake drama goes darker and deeper J
ANE CAMPION – giggly, warm and quietly glamorous – is describing how she and Ari Kleiman, co-director of Top Of The Lake: China Girl, used subterfuge to research the Sydney sex industry – the setting for the sequel to 2013’s acclaimed drama, Top Of The Lake.
To get into a brothel, they pretended he was a virgin and she his aunt, who wanted to help.
“We got ourselves into the sex room,” says Jane, 63, who won an Oscar for her screenplay of The Piano. “It was understood that he wasn’t there for sex, just to experience being close to a woman and talk to her.”
Eventually, they found a group of sex workers who were happy to talk about “anything”.
“We had the experience of hanging out at this one brothel and they were so generous and funny. It does feel like (they could say) anything, (like) how popular the ladyboys are with the married men.”
Top Of The Lake: China Girl starts with the body of a woman (unidentified, so nicknamed China Girl for her ethnicity) washing up on the shores of Sydney in a suitcase, her dark hair streaming from inside.
Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss returns as Detective Robin Griffin, who investigates the case and gets an unlikely new partner in Game Writer-director Jane Campion is back with a second series of Top Of The Lake. She and stars Elisabeth Moss, Gwendoline Christie and Jane’s daughter Alice Englert talk to about female friendship, sneaking into brothels and working with mum Of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie. countryside (where The Piano’s Those who watched – and loved Holly Hunter headed up an – season one (it was Emmy- and all-female commune beside the Bafta-nominated and won titular lake) to the hustle and Elisabeth a Golden Globe) will bustle of Sydney. remember we left Robin at the “I just couldn’t come up with any edge of the New Zealand lake, with ideas set in New Zealand, it felt like Johno, who she likes, but who may the excitement of that we’d or may not be her brother, having exhausted, or for me anyway found missing pregnant girl Tui. because that’s where I live some of At the beginning of the second the time and I really wanted to series, she’s back home in Sydney share it,” explains Jane. and clearly unhappy. “But I also live in Syndey and “You could have gone (it’s) a really exciting location for anywhere (with it),” says me because even though it’s not a Elisabeth, 34. “You wilderness, it is a wilderness. could have had four “The ocean really is that wild years later and her quality – the edge of the city that and Johno had this can be like a wild beach, it can be great relationship really peaceful, it’s really moody, and had a baby, or feminine as far as I’m concerned you could go the way because it’s tidal...” we went, which was Besides the main investigation, not the happiest. the other big plotline is that of “I requested that we go Robin reconnecting with the in a darker, deeper, more daughter she gave up as a baby. challenging direction, as Now a teenager, played by Jane’s I really didn’t think there was daughter Alice Englert, Mary lives much to do otherwise.” at home in a posh suburb of One of the biggest changes this Sydney with her dad, who her series is the move from the open academic mum (Nicole Kidman) skies of the New Zealand has left for another woman.