Daily News Film Critic

'Holy Smoke'

Friday, October 08, 1999

Word of advice to Jane Campion: There's still time. Lose the coda! Campion, the Australian director whose "The Piano" made her only the second woman to ever receive an Oscar nomination for directing (Lina Wertmuller is the other), has returned to the New York Film Festival with a controversial new movie that has nothing to apologize for except its seemingly tacked-on, and totally tacky, "one-year-later" character update.

"Holy Smoke," a battle of the sexes between an Australian woman (Kate Winslet) and an American cult-faith "deprogrammer" (Harvey Keitel), is a brilliant exploration of that corner of the mind where spirituality and sexuality often get their signals crossed. Playing like a very broad canvas play, it follows the shifts in roles and egos of a man and woman thrown together in a desert hut in Australia.

It features easily the best, richest and most courageous performance of the talented Winslet's young career, and adds one more raw, mesmerizing characterization to Keitel's credits.

"Holy Smoke," written by Campion and her sister Anna, screens at Alice Tully Hall tonight (9 p.m.) and tomorrow (noon). It opens commercially in New York theaters Dec. 3, probably with that deflating coda.

Other films in the festival's final weekend include: Egyptian director Youssef Chahine's Middle-East-meets-West love story, "The Other"; American newcomer Robinson Devor's black-and-white film noir spoof, "The Woman Chaser"; the dictator documentary "Mobutu, King of Zaire," and Atom Egoyan's "Felicia's Journey," the story of an Irish girl who becomes involved with a British serial killer.