The New York Film Festival Daily

Winslet's Ruth in Holy Smoke
"An incredible range..."

October 1999

When Kate Winslet says - "When I thought about becoming an actress, I never had fantasies about being a movie star" - you believe her.

Because nobody could turn out a performance as she has done in "Holy Smoke" unless they were an actress to the core of their being, inspired by the love of their art.

As "Being John Malkovich" propels director Spike Jonze into the wunderkind category of Stephen Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino, Winslet's stunning, knock-out, shaded performance as Ruth Barron in "Holy Smoke" puts her into that rarified tier reserved for Meryl Streep, Bette Davis and a few others.

The movie is a bravura peak for director Jane Campion, who returns to the quirky sensibilities of her early film Sweetie, while maintaining the powerful intensity and narrative drive of her big break-through hit, The Piano.

And it was through The Piano that Campion began a working relationship with the Oscar-nominated Harvey Keitel which continues and flourishes in "Holy Smoke." The film press are already proclaiming his role as PJ the cap of his career so far.

The storyline offers Keitel and Winslet actors' dreams: to play off each other, do cat-and-mouse synergy work, evolve and morph within their continuous one-on-one scenes - from strength to pain and fear and vulnerability and back to strength. Winslet plays a headstrong woman who is transformed by a spiritual leader while in India, and her Australian family summons a macho deprogrammer to "rescue" her. And the relationship is a power dance whose medium becomes sex.

"After Titanic, I felt nothing would be more challenging. But in this there were no special effects or computer graphics to fall back on. I just had to fill every moment and be Ruth, a girl I did not particularly like," Winslet told Garth Pearce of the London Times. "She makes this sleazy old man, PJ, finally realize he is a sleazy old man. You start the movie by thinking she is crazy and fucked up. But she has the ability to turn things around, even on her family members, and make them reassess their lives."

Acclaiming her performance, Variety's David Rooney remarked that Winslet showed "the kind of courage few young thesps would be capable of and an extraordinary range that sees her swing from crushed vulnerablilty to abrasiveness and brutality, from animal cunning to unhinged Australian accent."

Pearce also notes: "Winslet's performance is the best on screen from a woman this year."

"I think more and more people these days go for the safe option in filmmaking," Winslet told The New York Times' Alan Riding this summer in London. "'Holy Smoke' is very brave because I don't think it's easy to watch...(it's) the type of film that some people are going to love and some are going to go 'What's this all about?'"

The script was co-written by Jane Campion with her sister Anna, also a writer and filmmaker. Their screenplay, crafted through many back and forth conversations and impassioned debates about sex and spirituality and contemporary male-female relationships, stands out in an era of facile resolutions and familiar story archs. There is no black and white, no heroes and villains. "It's a deep psychological story in the sense that you have to understand what's going on inside these people's heads as well as the relationship they are starting to form," Winslet mused to Riding. "I think Ruth wants to give him the reality check that he wants to give her. There are times when you think, 'God, you manipulative cow.' At the same time, you sort of love her."