Review of Holy Smoke (1999) by Paul K — 28 Oct 2014

Thematically similar to Hideous Kinky, Holy Smoke's creators, Jane (The Piano) and Anna Campion, have given moviegoers a highly intriguing, yet ultimately positive and happy exploration of spiritual quests and mind control.

Winslet and Keitel make an unlikely yet intensely sexual pair whose intimately transformative (and potentially destructive) interactions in the equally intense Australian outback leave you forever guessing about who is right, who is in control, and who knows what is going on.

No one in the film is ultimately judged - not the gurus and their followers, not the skillful yet flawed 'dirty old man' that Keitel plays, not Winslet's selfishly sexual mystic who is brought back down to earth, and not even certain family members that you think only succeed in bringing their own issues to light in their comically frantic hypocrisy.

There is a rare and subtle exploration of the societal stereotypes that often get built around the expression of sexual power in youth. What is ultimately the strongest feature of the movie, though, and the one it almost loses, is the way the plot continually diverges from expected trajectories, never reaching the correct hallmark moment of profound revelation that changes everyone's life forever, the comic release that trades serious dialogue for a good laugh, nor the inexorable demise of characters who unleash their whole arsenal of self-destructive behaviors and go out in a blaze of glory.

There is something surprisingly satisfying and paradoxically fresh about movies that go for a human reality, even in intense situations, rather than some orgasmically divine climax. The weakness of the movie IMO was the questionable motivations behind some of the turns in the narrative.

I'm not entirely convinced that even Winslet's profound and beautiful sexuality was just motivation for Keitel to start acting like a Jack Nicholson character who becomes increasingly unhinged in the final part of the movie.

The ending was saved by an epilogue that restores a measure of reality to the character's lives and returns it to the careful balances it struck throughout most of its length. Winslet continues to give us the most subtle contemporary representations of complex generational tensions that existed nearly a decade before her birth (and perhaps some of her own generation's issues as well).

A truly gifted actress.