Sweetie

MOVIE #1,805 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 07.10.24 Part of the Jane Campion • Director Focus series Campion’s first proper full-length feature is a great one. The tree metaphor is obvious and it leads to an overly melodramatic (penultimate) climax but it's still effective, especially in how it ties back to the notion of how we can so easily let the perceived existence of symbols and omens direct our lives. I felt that deeply, as someone who is also prone to seeing things that aren't there or assigning meaning to the random and insignificant. This isn’t the main focus of the metaphor either, which is also a nice twist (Kay’s fear of taking a chance on familial life being the obvious connection). I like when metaphors are multifaceted or have multiple readings.

Listen, I wish I had more to say. I wish I had a real coherent review in me. I’m at a crossroads with this site and its purpose, both as a thing on the internet and on a personal level. I’m not sure what I am getting out of it beyond the compulsive routine of continuing to craft these posts (which are increasingly both becoming a burden and getting lower in quality: no surprise in the correlation there). This is just a great film and you should watch it. It gave me a renewed interest in the rest of Campion’s output. There are so many 'one perfect shot' compositions...



It's great. Borderline 10/10? What else.

The future of this site is in flux, though. I might start just leaving the posts blank if I don’t have anything worth writing. IDK! Sound off in the comments, y'all LOL.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,804 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,806 ⫸

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Sweetie is a 1989 Australian black comedy drama film directed by Jane Campion, and starring Genevieve Lemon, Karen Colston, Tom Lycos, and Jon Darling. Co-written by Campion and Gerard Lee, the film documents the contentious and chaotic relationships among a woman in her twenties, her parents, and her emotionally unstable sister. It was Jane Campion's first feature film. It was entered into the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film in 1991. It was released on January 19, 1989.