Sweetie

An Australian family film. Kay is a superstitious woman. She goes to a fortune teller and is told she will meet a man with a curl of hair on his forehead. The same day she sees exactly such a man at work and takes up with him. After a while the relationship goes flat. Kay is afraid of trees, secretly pulls up the sapling in the garden and tells nobody anything. Then her sister Dawn arrives. The family calls her Sweetie; as a child she sang and danced, her father believed she would be a star and still believes it. Sweetie moves in. She has a man with her, she has plans and none of them are real. Her behaviour cannot be predicted; childlike one moment, threatening the next. What the film is interested in is not illness but how the family has managed it for years: the father praises, the mother withdraws and Kay gets angry. The visual language is very marked: odd angles, extreme close-ups, patterned wallpaper and symmetrical framing. Karen Colston plays Kay and Geneviève Lemon plays Sweetie. It is Jane Campion's first feature. It played in competition at Cannes and split the audience. An important production for anyone who likes Australian cinema and uncomfortable family narratives. For a viewer wanting a likeable character, the film tries to endear nobody.