Holy Smoke Review
by "Harvey S. Karten" (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)December 1st, 1999
HOLY SMOKE
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
Miramax Films
Director: Jane Campion
Writer: Anna Campion, Jane Campion
Cast: Kate Winslet, Harvey Keitel, Pam Grier, Sophie Lee, Tim Rogers, Daniel Wyllie, Julie Hamilton, Paul Goddard
Jane Campion's ("The Piano") new movie, which will open for one week in December for Oscar consideration before having an open run in 2000, should get the Academy Award hands-down for "Best Picture about a Guy Who is Hoist with his Own Petard." Alas, such an tribute does not yet exist, but "Holy Smoke" is one helluvan examination of the struggle we poor human beings go through every day as our rational side struggles with the irrational. (If you don't believe such a civil war is waged regularly inside our little skulls, just try to remember what we dreamt about last night.) In particular, let us never underestimate the power of the sex drive. The energy unleashed or repressed by that dynamic can hardly be overstated, and now, Ms. Campion uses her vivid imagination and sense of cinematic color, light and imagery to portray the tussle in an over-the-top drama of gamesmanship that welcomes us once again to an Australian Woop-Woop that features an unlikely duo's making whoopie.
Borrowing the theme from the classic Bertolucci film of 1973 "Last Tango in Paris"--about an American expatriate who enters into a sexual liaison with a chance acquaintance abroad--Campion plunges into the story of a cult deprogrammer who is in grave danger of being programmed himself. After successfully busting up 189 cult-worshipping young people with "a recidivism rate of only 3.3 percent," the Los Angeles-based P.J. Waters (Harvey Keitel) is hired by a couple far away in South Australia to deprogram their daughter, Ruth Barron (Kate Winslet). On a trip to India with her friend Prue (Samantha Murray), Ruth had fallen under the sway of a forceful guru, Chidaatma Baba (Dhritiman Chaterji), and decides to remain in Delhi with Baba's devotees. Deceiving her that her father, Gilbert (Tim Robertson) is dying, Ruth's mother Miriam (Julie Hamilton) travels to Delhi and convinces her to return temporarily to their home, whereupon she is forced by her extended family to go to an isolated cabin for three days with P.J. Waters. Waters will proceed to break her down through a three-step process--before building her up to return to her normal life. But Ruth exploits her sexual prowess to throw the older man off course, turning the battle of wills into a literal knock-down, drag-out struggle that threatens to trash the cult-buster's undefeated record.
Campion puts together two of the most unlikely characters and compels us to accept the sexual bond that the much older "ugly American" has with this powerfully libidinous soul, giving new meaning to the joys of touring the terrain downunder. Kate Winslet, in the role of a woman trying to find herself spiritually in a manner not unlike her striving in Gillies Mackinnon's recent film "Hideous Kinky," radiates a sensuality so strong that we can almost forgive Keitel's P.J. Waters' descent into madness. This is hardly a film that takes itself with deadly seriousness, as Campion throws the screen open to an array of wacky characters, especially Ruth's outrageously flirtatious sister-in-law, Yvonne (Sophie Lee). Like a high-school kid in the throes of puppy love, Yvonne writes romantic letters to herself and while enjoying a sexual union with her husband, Robbie (Dan Wyllie) fantasizes an array of movie stars like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.
The goofy scenario is played out against the huge empty spaces of the Australian desert (filmed in and around the little town of Hawker in south Australia's Fliners Ranges). A single image, perhaps the most dramatically vivid, colorful and impressive of any film this year, occurs at the moment in Delhi that the Baba stares at Ruth, propelling upon her a hallucinatory impression that a third eye has grown in the middle of her forehead. She swoons amid a kaleidoscopic display that must be the first detail an enraptured devotee sees upon entering a state of Nirvana. Our assurance that Ruth is indeed sold on her new life in India comes to the fore when she dances wildly to Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know." At this point some in the audience will root for Ruth's victory over Waters, particularly when Campion impresses upon us the fuddy-duddyness of her parents and the near- derangement of people in Ruth's extended family.
If Harvey Keitel emerged as the invincible cleaner in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," he materializes here as the man who is sent to tidy up a soul but ends up as a basket case himself, at least temporarily until his long-term associate, Carol (Pam Grier), can straighten him out. Keitel enjoys his obligatory nude scene, attracted by a similarly naked Winslet in what becomes a mock-serious film about the vulnerability of both principals to the forces of the irrational. If the film comes across as too over-the-top, one which makes you wonder what Campion is really getting out (our search for spirituality? sexual politics?), the best way to interpret its vision is that life is unpredictable. Accept the illogical, the untenable, the wildly imaginative as much a part of our makeup as the coldly sensible. "Holy Smoke" is a fun picture full of vibrant imagery, wacky characters, and carnal aspirations.
Rated R. Running Time: 114 minutes. (C) 1999
Harvey Karten, [email protected]
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