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HOLY SMOKE
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Ruth (the beatifically-visaged Kate Winslet) is a young Australian who, on a vacation to India, falls in with a cult guru. Panicked, her frazzled Australian relatives hire T. J. Parker (Keitel), a no-nonsense potato-faced black-booted mirror-shaded Texan 'exiter,' to rescue first her body and then her mind. By telling Ruth that her father is dying, they trick her into returning to the outback, where Parker has promised that in three days he will deprogram her, as he has successfully done for 189 previous clients "with a recidivism rate of three and a half percent." But of course, this is Jane Campion, and just who manipulates whom remains to be seen.
Anyone who's seen Campion's other films such as SWEETIE and AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (watch the late-night Bravo listings) knows that she specializes in these self-absorbed nasty young women who by sheer obnoxious force subdue their relatives. (I would not want to be Jane Campion's mother or siblings watching these movies.) All that plays out here. From the start, Ruth is in charge of the dialog and her relatives (especially her mother) are the feckless souls who are truly lost. So over the three days, we have supposedly intense personal interaction, just Ruth and T. J., where teacher and student, hypnotist and subject, are reversed.
This was clearly supposed to happen subtly, but to Nancy and me it seemed clumsy and not credible. Keitel's sole apparent credentials as an exiter are a taxonomy of the approach (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3) and an ability to quote religious texts to imply he's not a clod. But he is *never* credible as a professional. He never establishes the remotest sensible rules of engagement of his exiting. When Ruth tries to turn the tables (by stripping naked and asking him if she likes him, how droll, how subtle), he succumbs with nary a qualm or a quiver (at least, not above the waist). Ruth's recovery never evolves, it just happens -- she seems sanely selfish from the beginning, even back in India -- and the dialog between them clunks amateurishly along, then turns weird when she, in some poorly developed vengeance, dresses him in drag.
Kate Winslet is a real actress who's shown guts in her choices (HIDEOUS KINKY, JUDE) despite having had the bad luck to make a zillion dollars playing opposite Leo Di. In this role she is 'wonderfully pneumatic' (to quote the Arch-Community Songster from BRAVE NEW WORLD -- she would make a quintessential Lenina Crowne) but also appealing. Keitel, alas, is a disappointment, but much of that can be traced to the foolish character he has been given to play.
Other reviewers, perhaps wishing to spare the rod, have commented on the scenery, both mineral and animal, and it's true, we get sweeping lyric skies and the ochre mountains of the Flinders Ranges. And woven throughout is a vicious portrait of modern Australians -- kiwi Campion delights in making Aussies look shallow, perverted louts. But if you want these things -- outback scenery, modern Australian satirized, snappier dialog, and better-looking men in more flamboyant drag -- go rent the marvelous PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT.