"Holy Smoke"
A film review by Linda Lopez McAlister
On "The Women's Show" WMNF FM 88.5 Tampa, FL
Saturday, February 12, 2000

There's reason for joy among feminists this morning, at least in the top film market citties such as Philadelphia where I am visiting at the moment. What is it? A new Jane Campion film has just opened. It's called " Holy Smoke" and you'll want to put it on your "must see" list when it comes to a theater near you. It is vintage Jane Camption. She has been, among other things, skewering the middle class Australian family since she was a kid (see "A Girl's Own Story" made when she was fifteen). The family in this film who live in a vast look-alike housing development called, with dripping irony, San Souci (the name of Frederick the Great's glorious palace outside Berlin). They could be the nextdoor neighbors to the dysfunctional family Campion created in her earlier film "Sweetie." Next to her siblings, Ruth (Kate Winslet) seems the most sane and reasonable of the lot. She and her sisters go off on a trip to India where Ruth falls under the spell of a holy man, experiences enlightenment, joins the ashram and burns her return ticket home.

When her family finds out, they're worried sick and her mother goes to India armed with lies about her father dying and then freaks out, forcing Ruth to accompany her on a hospital plane back to Sydney. Once she's there, the deprogrammer they have brought from America at great expense, P J Waters (Harvey Keitel), takes over, promising to return her to her family at the end of three days minus her dedication to the cult that has, in their eyes, captured her.

What happens out in "the half way hut" in the shadow of Ayres Rock is unlike anything you've ever seen at the movies before. It's sort of the Main Event in the battle of the sexes, with P J using his physical power, his tried and true deprogramming techniques, and his macho arrogance as his tools and Ruth using her faith, her knowledge that she has had a transforming spiritual experience, and her sexuality as hers. While he's trying to break her, she is slowly turning up the heat on him and eventually he can't control his desire for her. From there on in, she has him where she wants him. In a scene that women who believe that they should be in control of their own sexuality will marvel at, Ruth teaches P J how to make love to her on her terms, not his. Then, in a sequence that's reminiscent of the way Marlene Dietrich cruelly taunted and humiliated Emil Jannings in "The Blue Angel," Ruth puts lipstick and a dress on P J, and has sex with him her way for a change. She's gleeful because she has won the battle of wills, at least she thinks she has.

There's more, including a brief appearance by Pam Grier as Carol, P J's girlfriend from America but that's enough plot, find out yourself how it ends. Beware of young (and not so young) male reviewers writing about this film. They really get upset by it and some totally lose their sense of proportion about it and react hysterically (and I use that word advisedly). It's really the ultimate example of McAlister's Law; in this case it's not just getting kicked in the groin that makes them uncomfortable, it's a woman in controlling the sexual agenda, "emasculating" and humiliating the man and it's a real turn off for a lot of men (see, for example, the comments page on http\\us.imdb.com). But women viewers will understand that the deprogramming is going both ways here and Ruth may actually be doing P J a big favor. The epilogue shows that he is a changed man because something happened to him that night. Call it enlightenment if you will.

The film is "Holy Smoke." It's another extraordinary film by Jane Camption.

For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film.

Copyright, 2000 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint or reproduce this review without the permission of the author: mcalister@chuma1.cas.usf.edu