![]() ![]() She attempts to seduce Lou at the beach by licking his leg, and in a fit of pique, chomps down on Kay’s beloved porcelain horse figurines, bloodying her mouth in the process. Spouting improbable fantasies of a showbiz career (she does a trick with a chair), Sweetie has shown up with a strung-out boyfriend-cum-"producer” (Michael Lake), with whom she has loud, frequent sex, to Kay’s dismay.Īs uninhibited as Kay is uptight, the childlike and at times animalistic Sweetie is all crazy appetite and unbridled id. First and most disruptive is Kay’s younger sister, Dawn (Genevieve Lemon), nicknamed Sweetie, whose arrival is a literal home invasion - she smashes through the front door. It’s at that point that one family member after another shows up to complicate the picture. Before long the relationship has devolved into what Kay terms a “nonsex phase.” As their romance starts to cool, Kay uproots a sapling that Lou has planted in their backyard, fearing its eventual death. A tarot reader’s prediction leads her into an impulsive romance with Lou (Tom Lycos), an amusing paragon of calm (he practices transcendental meditation) next to Kay’s accusatory, wide-eyed mania. The ostensible heroine, Kay (Karen Colston), is a mass of obsessive neuroses and phobias - she harbors a deep fear of trees, which haunt her dreams, and she avoids the cracks in the pavement as she walks down the street. A family portrait that keeps shifting its center of gravity, a tragicomedy that doesn’t settle for easy laughter or tears, it can be a hard film to get a fix on - a testament to how skillfully Campion thwarts viewer expectations. ![]() More than two decades since its Cannes premiere launched the New Zealand-born, Australian-based Campion onto the world stage, “Sweetie” has lost little of its mysterious charm and transgressive power. Her long line of prickly heroines, who tend to challenge or disregard societal pieties and are generally regarded by those around them as threats or annoyances, begins with the sisters Kay and Dawn in “Sweetie,” her 1989 debut, which the Criterion Collection is issuing in a Blu-ray high-definition edition this week. Jane Campion’s movies have varied from Gothic romance (“The Piano”) to erotic thriller (“In the Cut”) to literary drama (“Bright Star”), but most of them center on willful, even difficult women. ![]()
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