Written by: Jane Campion & Gerard Lee
Starring: Genevieve Lemon, Karen Colston, Tom Lycos, Dorothy Barry, Jon Darling, Michael Lake
Rating: [3.5/5]
Caring for a loved one requires an immense amount of unconditional love. The type that allows for forgiveness even when repeated violations occur bringing harm. Parents typically carry the highest degree of this because they brought their child into this world and don’t want to give up on them. Sweetie demonstrates just how far this can go and the sadness inherent to the situation. Quite difficult to watch in moments, but well-crafted, this feature film debut by Jane Campion proves to be a winner.
Sweetie (Geneviève Lemon) and Kay (Karen Colston) are sisters within a family going through a bit of dysfunction. As much as they get along with each other, they certainly have their own issues they share together, which only heightens with the sexual relationships they get into with different men exposing much about how they feel about themselves.
Following a family as dysfunctional as this one does not serve as anything relatively new but what we see with Sweetie definitely displays someone going through a mental health crisis and a family unequipped to help her. With her being a full-grown woman, her breakdowns look far more dramatic making it quite uncomfortable to watch in several moments. However, it does speak to the power of the movie and the empathy we build with Sweetie through this difficult moment in her life.
While the titular character goes through her struggles, the moments of lucidity she displays with her sister, Kay, marks for the more touching moments of the film. Despite their issues and the places they have arrived in their lives, they still manage to maintain this closeness between them. A connection different from any other person in the world grounding the film in moments. With those touching moments, it allows when things get much more difficult later on to feel much more hurtful. This foundation shows how bad things can get, especially with what Sweetie embattles through her own struggles.
Taking place in this smaller Australian town, this feature has a general quirkiness to it with the characters. Each of them feels a bit larger than life in the way they navigate their relationships. Each of these quirks becomes quite endearing in their ways. This shows itself in Kay and her relationship with her significant other. With the issues they have, she finds the uprooting of a tree symbolizing of their love to serve as an emotional dagger making quite the impression. An action not meaning much to the average person, but certainly marks a monumental moment in their lives and the status of their relationships. The same feeling and logic apply to the remaining characters with Sweetie having the most destructive mechanisms of them all making for several upsetting scenes.
Piercing through these uncomfortable conversations and circumstances, Jane Campion begins her filmmaking career with quite the bang. As she proves, later on, she knows how to craft films focused on character development in these deeply human tales. It comes as no surprise she manages to accomplish this in her debut in the way she pulls us into the drama of these characters and has us feel for them and their plight. Her focus on the familial dynamics of this group of individuals allows for the messiness to ensue and for a level of tolerance for the actions to make perfectly good sense. These individuals know each other well but the way things devolve in this film really pushes them to their limit and Campion remained unafraid to display how far things could go.
Quite the interesting feature in the conversations it brings up through the characters but nevertheless allowing for plenty for the audience to ponder about, Sweetie serves as a standout debut by Jane Campion. Through all of the issues occurring in the feature, we never lose sight of the familial core and how much they are willing to put up with each other and their nonsense. Each of them carries a bit of it, but Sweetie certainly goes about things in her own way. If one thinks they could predict the way this feature would go, they would certainly be wrong and the places it goes definitely display Campion’s strong directorial voice and how much she can get from her actors through this difficult story.
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