the audience applauded

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Jane Campion's "Holy Smoke" stars Kate Winslet as Ruth Barron, a young Australian who travels to India and joins a religions cult. Worried, Ruth's parents hire P.J Waters (Harvey Keitel), an American exit counsellor and cult expert. Waters isolates Ruth in a remote cabin and successfully "deprograms" her.The film's another of Campion's feminist parables. Burnt by several relationships with men, resentful of her father's infidelities and tired of being sexually objectified, Ruth runs away and latches onto a religious guru. This guru, she believes, wants nothing from her. The reality is that the guru's cult is as exploitative, patriarchal and demanding as the outside world, but Ruth doesn't see this. Her blinders are up, denial is sweet and she wholeheartedly believes that the cult does nothing but profess and practise absolute, unconditional love.Waters, meanwhile, is everything Ruth finds abhorrent. He's a man's man, Campion painting him as a figure of masculine excess, with cowboy boots, a cocksure swagger and a bucket full of charm. Ruth thinks he's the devil, speaking in forked tongues and sent by Satan to steal her away from God's sweet embrace. When the duo consign themselves to a cabin in the wilderness, a bizarre battle of the sexes then begins. Waters breaks Ruth down, rebuilds her into a good, docile, obedient little woman and has sex with her. He conforms to Ruth's caricatural vision of men; men want nothing but control, to deny a woman's desires. Ruth then fights back. She belittles Waters, attacks his age, his masculinity, undermines his machismo, and goes so far as to dress him up in lipstick, mascara, high-heels and a dress. When the battle's over, women have been masculinzied, men feminized, a free-for-all in which gender codes are now ripe for appropriation by all. Waters is humbled and Ruth likewise, the latter learning that men can genuinely love, genuinely be hurt (Waters was sexually abused by a man), genuinely care and genuinely protect. Waters then writes the words "be kind" on Ruth's forehead, encapsulating the film's final, quasi-religious message: transcend gender stereotypes and love all. The film then ends with both Ruth and Waters becoming rounded, 21st century post-feminists. He's married to blaxploitation actress Pam Grier, symbolically chosen by Campion to represent Waters' "relinguishing of control" (he's now both breadwinner and stay at home house wife, a baby strapped to his chest), whilst Ruth's returned to India to do "good work" for a charity (with a new man whom she's allowed to get close).The film's very much a prequel to Campion's underrated "In The Cut". Its plot is rather original, and it sports exquisite cinematography by Dion Beebe ("Collaeral", "Miami Vice", "In The Cut"). Unfortunately the film also frequently missteps with moments of humour (better to treat the material as straight drama), is preoccupied with gender issues which are virtually meaningless when ripped free from the context of class, power and economics, and its treatment of new religious movements and exit counselling will no doubt offend persons knowledgeable of these fields (exit counsellors aren't remotely like Waters, would never do anything he does here). The film also wastes the opportunity to explore a far more interesting theme; when you deprogram a subject, what do you substitute in the absence of religion? Is it ethical to substitute anything? This is a spiritual as well as political problem. Indeed, many ex cult members, when deprogrammed, lapse into depression and self-destruction, unlike Ruth, who recovers immediately.8/10 – Interesting idea, undermined by some moments of comedy and some obvious, on-the-nose writing. Campion doesn't know how to be subtle. Worth one viewing.

This is a review of the film from a column I wrote in a lifestyle magazine in 2000.As a staple of our dating and weekend ritual, dinner and a movie is a well-entrenched institution. As a lover of both fine food and good cinema, I would like to offer la cocinita's well-fed readers a monthly pick from the recent releases on video. Keep in mind: my set of tastes isn't always entirely rational. While I have a penchant for upsetting, aggressive movies such as Hate and Natural Born Killers, I can also enjoy the subtlety of films like Dead Man or Wings of Desire. More often than not, I am drawn to thought provoking films no matter how much they try my patience or wrench my stomach. But then to spite myself, I'll fall in love with Starship Troopers. Go figure.This month, I turn your attention to the latest drama from Jane Campion, Holy Smoke, starring Kate Winslet (Titanic, Heavenly Creatures) and Harvey Keitel (The Bad Lieutenant, Mean Streets). (Pam Grier (Jackie Brown, Foxy Brown) gets third billing, but don't hold your breath or blink if her name drew you to the movie.) The movie opens in India where the young, beautiful and impressionable Ruth (Kate Winslet) and her Aussie friend are on vacation. Amongst the bustle of an overcrowded, smoke-filled plaza, Ruth notices other white girls dressed in saris, giggling and appearing to fit into these foreign and mystical surroundings.At this point I lost valuable screen time attempting to divine the meaning of the Neil Diamond tune playing over the images of ex-patriot hippies writhing on a rooftop in India, but soon I was pulled back to the rest of the plot's setup: Ruth finds herself literally touched by a guru and believes that he has shown her the way to enlightenment. Her family, of course, believes she has been drugged or swindled into the starry notions the guru has fed her. They hire PJ Waters (Harvey Keitel) to rid her of the influence of the alleged cult leader. As PJ trains his will on Ruth to break her of her "false" mysticism, we are brought into intimate contact with Ruth's unresolved issues from a childhood crying for communication and nurturing.What follows is a well-acted tete-a-tete between the troubled Ruth and PJ's macho American caricature as they explore each other and themselves. This is the meaty section of the film where PJ systematically strips Ruth of her belongings, both physical and mental, that have anything to do with her India experience. In this process, the tables become turned as he is forced to look at himself in the mirror. At the finish line, Ruth's romantic notions are all but dead and PJ winds up in the middle of the desert wearing a dress and red lipstick. Who won the war of the wills? You be the judge.Holy Smoke is written by Jane Campion and her sister Anna and explores issues of a large dysfunctional suburban family and coercive, overbearing father figures. In other words, this is classic Campion. These have been common themes in Jane's previous work in one strain or another, and now her sister is getting in the same bed, if you will. Jane started exploring these issues in the mid 80's in her short films "Peel," "A Girl's Own Story," and "Passionless Moments," and continued the thread with her features Sweetie and The Piano. In Holy Smoke, the Campion sisters dive head-first into the burning cauldron of sexual politics between a young woman searching for meaning and an adult well-entrenched in his beliefs. As in other Campion films, this films attempts to pull into focus the psycho-sexual nature of male-female relationships, especially young women's relationships with father figures. On one level the film seems to say that male domination is arousing, and on the other hand its message seems to be that a little T & A can go a long to making a man submissive. While Campion's themes have a tendency to bewilder, I found Holy Smoke to succeed where some of her other films may have not, largely due to Kate Winslet's character and the strong performances by the rest of the cast, as well as the enchanting, warm cinematography (Dion Beebe) throughout the film.A collection of Campion's shorts are available on the compilation titled (thought-provokingly enough) Jane Campion Shorts. If you find yourself attracted to Jane's present work, I recommend viewing her shorts, especially since it is uncommon to find most filmmaker's early work on tape. By the way, both "Peel" and The Piano won a Palm d'Or at Cannes, which just so happens to be the biggest gold star a filmmaker can ever receive.With Holy Smoke, Jane Campion has made another interesting piece of cinema. But beware, this is no light fodder. The film covers some fairly heavy territory that could well make you take a second look at yourself and the sordid relationship with your family that you would rather stick in a dark place. Nonetheless, if you would rather lay back and take in the beautiful backdrops of India and Australia, this is a fine film as well.

It's so hard to find a philosophical movie about India. When I took this movie from the local library (fortunately I didn't pay for it), I was hoping to see a teaser about Buddhism, or at least something funny about sects, but again I was wrong, and once again I understand that nobody in the film industry can make a real movie about India, Buddhism, or inner vacation. It doesn't even get close to this point. Don't search any philosophical ideas in this movie, you'll much more find every kind of porn fantasy: peeing naked woman, two men and women half naked, old man and young woman sex, man having makeup, gay/lesbians, etc. As they couldn't make a real movie, they tried the cheapest catches with naked women. My biggest movie mistake in my life, I watched it until the end to make sure and warn everyone not to watch it and waste 140 minutes from your lifetime, unless you're willing to wake up some sick feelings from strange fantasies. I was shocked seeing Kate Winslet in this movie, I really wonder how they made her sign the contract, it's definitely not the same woman who made Titanic a few years before. If your goal if to see her naked (and more), I'm not even sure it's worth renting this movie. Actors are overacting, I kept asking myself during the whole movie if it was the director's mistake or the actor's mistake, but the result is really bad, I guess they really smoked something while making this movie.

Contains some spoilers. I will say right out that the movie is well worth seeing. It is interesting and engaging. The two stars, Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel are both excellent actors, and they have some challenging material to work with. Some stars are lovely to watch. They radiate a presence that is engaging and enjoyable. Their acting skills may be limited but we always enjoy seeing them. Others are good at their craft, excellent actors who can create a mood and scene and a believability that draws you into the film. Then there are a few that have both the charisma and the skill. When that happens they can take just about any script and make it interesting. Both these actors are in that category.As you may have guessed the problem with the film is the script. Not so much the actual dialog, which is good, but the plotting and character development. Due to the skill of the stars you may not even notice flaws, but then again you might. It may be that the writer/director simply took on more than she could handle. Although it would have been a bit dull and predictable, the movie would have worked quite well as a simple movie about "deprogramming" a girl who got taken up in a cult in India. However, the writer/director wanted to go beyond that. We all have our addictions. Sometimes it's a substance but more often it is an emotion, or a certain kind of thrill, self pity, a desire for power and dominance. I call these kind of addictions "character addictions." We all have darker things in our soul that we try to wrestle with. Deep seated desires and flaws. When people get caught up in a cult or a substance addiction it is usually an effort to handle or exploit these character addictions and character flaws. In the film the writer director attempts to explore this darker side of addiction, and in doing so delves into the emotions, desires and drives that we all have which we desperately try to manage and cover up. What starts out as a Macho American trying to deprogram a sexy but foolish Australian girl turns into a soul searching, and at times terrifying exploration of the darker side of both of these people.Oh, if only Jane Campion, the writer/director, had been able to pull it off. However, she doesn't. As the characters descend into their darker thoughts and emotions the steps are abrupt and unconvincing. Kate seems to go from having some doubts, to grief, to insanity and voracious sexual desire - all in a flash with no real convincing turning points. Harvey, who knows he stepping into very dangerous territory and has had enough experience not to resist it, suddenly succumbs. We don't really see the reasons for this in his previous behavior.Despite all this and other plotting issues, the movie does work, mainly due to the skill and charisma of the stars. I give Jane Campion a 10 for wanting to go beyond the ordinary, but a 3 for not realizing it was inadequate. The stars get 10's. The supporting cast gets about a 4. They are meant to be comic relief but come off as too silly for real life. The exception is Julie Hamilton as mum. She perfectly plays a deeply loving mother who, if not very bright, has a heart as big as the world, and would do anything, and give anything for her child.Enjoyable, even if it is a bit confused and disturbing; a must see if you like these stars.