Top of the Lake: Chi­na Girl – first look review

When we last saw Robin Grif­fin (Elis­a­beth Moss) she had solved the case of a dis­ap­pear­ing preg­nant 12-year-old, uncov­ered a child sex traf­fick­ing ring and entered into a roman­tic rela­tion­ship with her pos­si­ble half-broth­er. Top of the Lake was ini­tial­ly con­ceived to be a sin­gle out­ing from cre­ators Jane Cam­pi­on and Ger­ard Lee, yet four years lat­er the pair have reen­list­ed Moss for a sec­ond entry, sub­ti­tled Chi­na Girl.

Robin has returned to her base of Syd­ney, Aus­tralia (the first series took place in New Zealand). Gone are the vast fields and qui­et neigh­bour­hoods with an under­cur­rent of dark­ness. Also gone are the many char­ac­ters that com­pli­cat­ed Robin’s life. The time that has lapsed in between these two sto­ries is even­tu­al­ly explored, with the odd famil­iar face – some friend­ly, some vil­lain­ous – mak­ing a brief return.

In Syd­ney, crime and cor­rup­tion live in the streets, in full view. Robin’s lat­est case con­cerns the dis­cov­ery of a preg­nant corpse found washed ashore. Mean­while, she recon­nects with her daugh­ter Mary (Alice Englert, Campion’s daugh­ter) who was born 17 years ear­li­er as the result of Robin’s bru­tal rape (explored in the first sea­son). Mary now lives with adopt­ed par­ents Julia (Nicole Kid­man) and Pyke (Ewan Leslie), though home life is far from domes­tic bliss, with Julia spend­ing half of her time liv­ing with her female lover.

An already crum­bling fam­i­ly is about to be shak­en up even more when Mary brings along her 42-year-old boyfriend Puss (David Den­cik). Robin becomes clos­er to Puss as she strug­gles to get to know her daugh­ter. What she soon finds out is that he is very much involved in the dis­mal fate of her mys­te­ri­ous Chi­na Girl.

Atten­dees at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val had the option of see­ing Chi­na Girl in two dif­fer­ent forms: the most pop­u­lar was a screen­ing of the first two episodes. Those a sense of adven­ture were able to attend the entire six-hour series. The two options pro­vide dis­tinct expe­ri­ences; the first two episodes focus most­ly on devel­op­ing the plot of the mys­tery, while the remain­ing four spend more time build­ing char­ac­ter and expos­ing inter­nal moti­va­tions. The crime plot even­tu­al­ly becomes sec­ondary to the explo­ration of moth­er­hood and inter­nalised misogyny.

The events of Top of the Lake have altered Robin as a char­ac­ter, as she seems to have final­ly come to terms with being raped, yet car­ries an aura of dark­ness as a result. In that sense, Robin remains very much like Jodie Foster’s Clarice Star­ling in The Silence of the Lambs. She is in a con­tin­ued state of trans­for­ma­tion that expos­es a cer­tain fragili­ty in her demeanour. To ful­ly appre­ci­ate the rich­ness of Cam­pi­on and Lee’s writ­ing, don’t look at Chi­na Girl as the crime pro­ce­dur­al it masks itself as.

Mys­te­ri­ous and grue­some ques­tions are raised at its out­set, but these ques­tions are answered in an unusu­al­ly sub­dued man­ner. Rather than a big ​‘ah ha!’ moment, the cas­es unfold in the back­ground through the inter­ac­tions between char­ac­ters. These inter­ac­tions may be ini­ti­at­ed by the live crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, yet they are resolved through a more pro­found medi­a­tion on the nature of exis­tence. The how becomes entire­ly unim­por­tant; it is only the why that matters.

Top of the Lake: Chi­na Girl may not sat­is­fy genre hounds look­ing for a dense mys­tery. Cam­pi­on and co choose to fol­low gener­ic con­ven­tions, but Chi­na Girl is, at its essence, a char­ac­ter study. Look at it as a mood piece on moth­er­hood, wom­an­hood and daugh­ter­hood. Cam­pi­on, Lee, and Moss have joined togeth­er to craft a shat­ter­ing piece of sto­ry­telling; one that is entire­ly unique and painful­ly necessary.