Review of Sweetie (1989) by Michael O — 15 Feb 2009

SWEETIE, from the first scene, plays ecstatically like a droll pop art exercise in cahoots with the bold, funny, painful, maniacal, and turly alive moments that Tennessee Williams and Peter Kennedy Toole would've come up with had they taken hold of the camera. If I were to nominate someone to make CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES into a movie it would be Jane Campion.

I love this movie because the dialogue is non-stop funny, because a woman talks about tantric sex with an "mhm" at the end of each sentence, because the dad drives off a ranch at full speed to later park and kick a tree stump, because Louie meditates wrapped in a blanket, because Sweetie has sex with a funny little druggie, and because the ending is one of the most distinctive way of saying: "You've just seen a movie by a true original.".

I can't stop thinking about this movie. I don't think I've ever connected with a style or story or characterization in the way I have with Jane Campion's movie. SWEETIE is very radical and tender and poetic and it's only her first movie! It's as bold and original and immediately arresting a film as Lynch's BLUE VELVET, Wong Kar Wai's CHUNGKING EXPRESS, Tarr's WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES, and Aronofsky's PI. There are other masterpieces like the aforementioned that have surely slapped me into attention and clawed into my noodles but nothing like this, it's like love, and now that I've found it, I wonder where she's been all along.