Daily Bruin
U. California-Los Angeles

Winslet suffers in horrendous Holy Smoke!

December 3, 1999

(U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES -- Where there's "Holy Smoke," there's no holy fire. Instead there's poorly designed shock tactics disguised as daring moviemaking, an ill-fitting, silly juxtaposition of levity and gravity and a film that fails on multiple levels.

Kate Winslet does her best with the subpar material as Ruth, a young Australian woman who vacations to India and decides to stay there and follow a guru. When her friend and traveling partner reports this catastrophe to Ruth's parents, they manage to lure Ruth back to their home in suburban Sydney under the pretense that her father is dying. (In reality, he's perfectly fine.)

Enter ace cult deprogrammer PJ Waters (a serviceable Harvey Keitel) and it's here where the film really begins. Earlier scenes in India and Sydney are a bit disjointed at times and the humor occasionally seems to resemble camp more than wit (which may be deliberate but still does not work well). It is only when Waters appears and begins to deprogram Ruth that the film falls apart at the seams.

While it would be inappropriate to discuss some of "Holy Smoke's" worst failings as they hinge on important plot points, it can be divulged that Keitel spends the last fifth of the film in a little red dress, because Winslet's character thinks he's misogynistic. To those of you who view this as a logical-sounding development, perhaps the movie may be more interesting than this review makes it out to be.

Yet, Keitel's wardrobe is not even "Holy Smoke's" most ridiculous indulgence. In a scene that would have angry mobs wielding pitchforks storming Paul Verhoeven's house if he had directed this film, Winslet urinates during a full-frontal nude shot. It is unclear whether this is meant to be a warped attempt at seduction or an expression of Ruth's vulnerability, but either way it comes across as having no purpose in the film other than to simply shock the viewer.

Even during its less preposterous moments, "Holy Smoke," often misses the mark resoundingly. Attempts at humor are frequently orchestrated through the guise of stereotypes played for comic effect (a slut and a homosexual couple) and even when the jokes are funny, which they occasionally are, they still do not mesh well with the film's more serious subject matter.

Goofy fantasy sequences, which seem to appear out of nowhere, further estrange the viewer from any real connection to the material. These fantasy sequences, along with some of the more sensationalistic subject matter in the film, come off as an orchestrated attempt to exude hipness. Campion is making sure we understand that she is a daring director willing to shock her audience and push the boundaries of cinema. Using shock tactics and unorthodox sequences in the context of such an unrealized film leaves the impression of being an attempt to divert attention from the subpar work, not of being avant-garde.

So much is the matter with "Holy Smoke" that it's hard to pinpoint where it goes wrong or single out areas for improvement. With a film like this, it makes more sense just to chalk it up as a loss and go back to the drawing board.