In a smaller pond

JANE CAMPION IS SO associated with New Zealand, it's difficult to believe that she has not worked there for 20 years. The director-writer's last film in her homeland was 1993's The Piano, an unforgettable story of a mute woman (played by Holly Hunter) who falls for Harvey Keitel's brusque plantation worker in the 1850s. Campion won the Palme D'Or at Cannes for the film, and bagged an Oscar for best screenplay for it, too.

Since then, she's made some well-received period dramas (such as an adaptation of Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady and the John Keats biopic Bright Star), and contemporary tales about women exploring their sexuality ( In the Cut, Holy Smoke). But none of these took her back to the country where she was born and grew up. Now she has returned to New Zealand for the six-hour television drama Top of the Lake, an electric blend of David Lynch's Twin Peaks and the detective drama The Killing. She finally gets to work with Hunter again for the first time since The Piano.

"It was a bit like a big slumber party," says Hunter, 55, who won the best actress prize at Cannes, and an Academy Award, for The Piano. Hunter plays GJ, the guru-like leader of a local women's camp stationed on the fringes of Lake Top, a small town seething with secrets and reverberating from the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old, Tui Mitcham (played by Jacqueline Joe).

Hunter's gnomic character sports long silvery locks, and seems to be physically modelling her look on 59-year-old Campion.

"Jane knew GJ. She understood the character," admits Hunter, who adds that she didn't initially think she was the right choice to play a guru: "I've had no exposure to gurus in my life. My idea of a guru is Ben Kingsley. I said: 'Why don't you get him? I don't get it!' And Jane said, 'No, you're the one. I want you.'"

Ask Campion what was special about Hunter, and she shrugs. "Holly's an explorer and a truth teller," she says.