Holy Smoke **

Religious drama by Jane Campion. Australia. With Kate Winlset (Ruth), Harvey Keitel (P. J. Waters), Julie Hamilton (Miriam), Sophie Lee (Yvonne), Pam Grier (Carol). Script: Anna and Jane Campion. Photography: Dion Beebe. Music: Angelo Badalamenti. Producer: Jan Chapman. Distributed by: Bac Films. 1 h 55. Dolby Srd. 142 copies.

A female-Hindi against a tough-guy. A young and beautiful Australian girl, won by a Hindu sect has been living in India for a few months. Her family manages to forcefully bring her back to Australia and entrust her to P. J. Waters, an American "cult deprogrammer" quite a bit older than her. But, through her truthfulness and her bluntness, the young Ruth turns the man's certainties upside down, makes him her lover, and dissolves his arrogant virility. And then she changes his faith.

Two movies in one. The choice of Kate Winslet is a good idea. Because she is an excellent actress and her appetizing body is the opposite of the swoon shrimp. Ruth's mystic for India is a way to escape from the uncompressible stupidity of her Australian environment. And her family is forced, like every family, to question itself about her leaving the pack. So a whole first part of the movie, very well filmed and photographed, tells about Ruth giving herself to the kitsch listlessness of mystical India. And then, her pathetic call back to a reason with sense. But suddenly, the intervention of Harvey Keitel as American cop of consciousness slides to a confrontation about the part and the power of a man in faith. And brutally, we then enter another movie, a sort of "Last Tango in Sydney" where kinky sex has the part of the debates execution. He had all power over her. Suddenly, she has ascendancy over him, an old fashioned, old crate, touched by her grace. In this part, it's hard to follow the movie, starting from the metaphysical to go to the physical, it comes back to the metaphysical. We can tell ourselves that for Jane Campion, the Big Everything matters a lot more than a little nothing's wee-wee. It's one way to see things. But then this movie, produced by a woman (Jan Chapman), directed by a woman and written by two (Jane and Anna, her sister), suddenly reveals a "let's make it even to the guys" aspect a little out-dated.