Sweetie (Jane Campion, 1989)

Michael Lake, Karen Colston, Tom Lycos, and Geneviève Lemon in Sweetie

Cast: Geneviève Lemon, Karen Colston, Tom Lycos, Jon Darling, Dorothy Barry, Michael Lake, Andre Pataczek, Jean Hadgraft, Paul Livingston, Louise Fox, Ann Merchant, Robyn Frank, Bronwyn Morgan. Screenplay: Gerard Lee, Jane Campion. Cinematography: Sally Bongers. Art direction: Peter Harris. Film editing: Veronika Jenet. Music: Martin Armiger.

Jane Campion's Sweetie is a sharply filmed, deftly styled, rawly acted family tragicomedy, and one of the most remarkable feature directing debuts in movie history. I use the word "tragicomedy" reluctantly because there's no easy way to capture the tone of Campion's film. It can make you laugh but uneasily, because its characters are so damaged and unpredictable that there's an element of pity and fear in our responses to them. The point of view is largely that of Kay (Karen Colston), a neurotic young woman -- among other things, she suffers from dendrophobia, the fear of trees -- with a sister, Dawn (Geneviève Lemon), aka "Sweetie," who dances on the edge of psychosis for much of the film until she finally goes over the edge. Kay is the kind of person who, when a fortune teller reads her tea leaves and sees a man with a question mark in his face, almost immediately runs into one. He's Louis (Tom Lycos), who, when Kay meets him, has a lock of hair dangling down over a mole on his forehead, an irresistible embodiment of the prophecy of the tea leaves. Louis has just gotten engaged to another woman, but before you know it, he and Kay are living together. Their life has just stalemated into sexlessness when Sweetie arrives, with her "producer," a narcoleptic guy named Bob (Michael Lake), in tow. Eventually, we meet Kay and Sweetie's parents, Gordon (Jon Darling) and Flo (Dorothy Barry), and learn that Gordon has spent most of his life spoiling Sweetie, encouraging her to believe that she has an abundance of talent. Summary of Sweetie fails at this point to capture the crisply distanced way that Campion presents this ensemble and works out their interplay. Her achievement in this film has been likened to the films of David Lynch and Jim Jarmusch, and there are moments that for me recall David Byrne's True Stories (1986) -- the Australia of Sweetie is very much kin to the Texas of Byrne's film -- but Campion is really doing her own thing, and doing it well.