Holy Smoke (1999) User Reviews

"Where there's fire, there's smoke"

[danielll_rs · 7/10 · 25 June 2000]

Bizarre. Fascinating. Flawed. Out of control. Definitely not ordinary. I can use all those expressions to show what I feel about "Holy Smoke", but I think they are not enough to express all my mixed feelings about it. This is not an easy film to watch and more difficult than that to review, but I can say that its qualities overcome the majority of its flaws.

"Holy Smoke" is a story about two totally different people. Ruth is a young Australian woman who travels to India and there starts to take part in a cult, getting fascinated with it. Her family starts to get worried about that and contracts PJ Waters, the other face of the coin, to make Ruth forgets her new beliefs and return to a normal life. They will spent some very unusual days in a hut on the desert, where we don't know who is in charge of the situation. Jane Campion writes and directs this weird and tense story with a wonderful passion. She tries to escape from all the clichés and succeeds in. There are some other stories of Ruth's weird family: her gay brother, her nymphomaniac sister-in-law, her ingenuous mother. This is the humorous part of the film, where you'll see even a sheep serving as a table at Ruth's house. But, strangely, "Holy Smoke" didn't feel as a dramatic comedy. It's one of those pictures that you can't define the genre with sure.

All the qualities and flaws of "Holy Smoke" come from the directing and the writing. There are some slow moments, exaggerated situations, some out of places scenes which could have been easily deleted. These are the main reasons why I didn't enjoy very much Jane Campion's earlier works: the overrated "The Piano" and the tasteless "The Portrait of a Lady". But here the flaws sometimes can be forgotten because Campion explains the story better than in her other works and succeeds in captivating the audience with an interesting story, discussing subjects as sex and religion with the right tone.

The one who really shines here is Kate Winslet. Harvey Keitel is great as always, but Ms. Winslet gives us an Oscar caliber performance. She doesn't have problem in appearing naked, sing, dress Keitel with a red dress and say what she thinks. I'm sure that her performance won't disappear in smoke, at least for me.

"Holy Smoke" was very criticized and snubbed, but it deserves a second chance. I agree that it is flawed and obviously not for everyone. But watch it with patience, pay attention at the subliminal messages, have some fun and think a little. It is worth the price of the ticket.

Very good subject but the movie lacks depth

[Pteromysvolans · 7/10 · 23 September 2004]

The interesting and important themes dealt with make this movie well worth watching.

First you think that it will be a simple educational movie about cult addiction and recovery - but then the plot starts to get complicated. Maybe even a bit too complicated, because the end part of the movie feels rather artificial.

The story tells about very important and even universal things: meaning of life, feelings of emptiness, relationships of leaders and their pupils, human nature, need of love. But though those themes are thought provoking, the movie itself lacks a lot as a movie. I cannot help thinking that someone could have made this into a much better movie (shouldn't be the fault of the makers though, many of them have had good artistic achievements).

The persons lack enough depth. The truly complicated nature of people is not - after all - portraited realistically enough in this movie. Because of that you never start to take the movie seriously enough despite the many dead serious themes dealt with.

Very difficult movie to rate. In purely artistic sense, the movie: acting, directing, filming etc. is worth maybe 6/10, but because of the important thought provoking subject, I give it a much better 8/10.

Interesting idea, flawed execution

[bat-5 · 5/10 · 25 January 2000]

Holy Smoke has two good performances from Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel. It also has some nice cinematography and some interesting visual tricks, but apart from that, the film is kind of a mixed bag. The story concerns Winslet's family trying to break her from the hold of a religious sect in India. Harvey Keitel is called in by the family to break Winslet and return her to her family. What follows is a three day odyssey that contains an odd transformation from both characters. I'm not sure how I felt after seeing the film, to tell the truth I'm still not sure what the film was saying.

Smoked Poison

[Chrysanthepop · 30 December 2008]

Jane Campion takes us to dark territory again in 'Holy Smoke' but this time with a touch of comedy. I am surprised at the negative response so many have claiming that it is anti-feminist blah blah blah or that it is a comedy with no substance. On the contrary, I find 'Holy Smoke' to be a provocative piece full of substance.

The refreshing novel concept is pretty daring and Campion balances both dark humour and intensity. She tackles various relevant themes such as respect and care within the family (the mother is the only one who seems to be concerned about what happened to her daughter in India while the father is totally indifferent), sexual manipulation, spirituality vs brainwash, power control and so on. The viewer is totally absorbed on how the de-programmer 'saves' Ruth but things take unexpected turns and we start questioning who exactly this PJ Waters is. The relationship between PJ and Ruth gradually becomes reminiscent of that between Lolita and Humbert (from Kubrick's 'Lolita'). The dysfunctional family is portrayed in a funny light but the characters's (especially the women's) despair and struggle is evident such as Mom being concerned about her daughter and Yvonne who is unhappy with her sex life. Campion, with the help of the actors, creates this whole mysterious atmosphere through the characters. We are given some nice glimpses of the isolated dry Australian landscape.

The performances are terrific. Kate Winslet, even though occasionally switches back to her own British accent, acts phenomenally. She already made a brave choice by choosing such a risky role and the actress just shows how comfortable she is in the skin of her character and mesmerizes the viewer. Harvey Keitel does nothing short of a fine job but he is obviously overshadowed by Winslet. The supporting cast, especially Sophie Lee (as Ruth's desperate and sleazy sister-in-law) and Julie Hamilton (as the concerned and loving mother).

'Holy Smoke' is a well-made and brave film. Clearly it is not for everyone. There are very few movies that are both funny and thought-provoking. 'Holy Smoke' is one such captivating film.

Post-'prestige', a partially successful return to SWEETIEland.(possible spoiler)

[alice liddell · 6/10 · 17 April 2000]

In a Shakespeare play like 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', the seeming order of the ruling caste hides a hotbed of anxieties, sexual, social, identity etc. To work these problems out, the action is moved away from the ruling centre to a nearby green space, a forest for example, where these anxieties and repressions are allowed to play themselves out before order is healthily restored.

Jane Campion in HOLY SMOKE uses this model, but there is no normality, health or restoration here. Ruth and PJ play out their psychodrama in the outback away from the bourgeois normality that is desperate to reassert itself. Because Judy's great crime is not the joining of a loony cult, but the fact that she has run away, she has made her own choice, she has refused the hypocritical grind of conventional domesticity and marriage, in favour of a more liberating connection.

It is not really the point that this is quaintly old-fashioned material, or that Judy's cult IS loony, that its appropriation of Hindu authority is gleeful kitsch, that the 'guru''s intentions may be less than spiritual, that Campion films the Indian sequence, as with much else in this deceptively 'serious' film, with surreal flippancy. The fact is that Judy's transgression is contrasted with the 'normality' of her home life, a life based on mendacity, adultery, sickness, idiocy, and, worst of all, a repressive conformity verging on the fascist (or cult-like), made even more frightening in that the grotesques surrounding her seem so loveably stupid.

Campion's method in the film seems to be to wear everyone down, to strip everyone of illusion, faith, pride, pretension. This is how the struggle between Judy and PJ plays. In one way it's a LAST TANGO IN PARIS-exercise in sexual nihilism. Out in the wilderness, in the 'cave' as PJ calls it, stripped of inessentials, both characters engage in a gladiatorial conflict, removing all conventions and defences, until they are bloody and beaten, they are not longer the selves they have created for themselves.

No one wins, we are brought to the beginning, we are allowed start again. Judy goes back to India, where she began the movie, PJ abandons his lecherous ways to become a partner, father (and after the families we've seen, this is hardly a victory) and novelist. The 'normal' family are in a sense rent too: the father finally leaves with his mistress, the mother goes to renew herself in India with Judy, the sister has already cheated on her doltish husband.

Can it really be this simple? The mind/sex games seem to take place according to very violent S&M principles, and the sexual undercurrent bursts into role-play, gender fluidity and humiliation. But is there a real counter to the violence inflicted on Judy? The horrifying scene where she is corralled by her male 'family' is continued by PJ's games, and the attempted rape in the nightclub. PJ as a bullying agent of male domination deserves to be cut down to size, but what did Judy do to deserve her punishment? The whiff of female masochism running throughout is possibly suspect - we expect it of Harvey at this stage, but can women only experience freedom through degradation, or is this just a 'comment' on how liberated women really are today?

The difficulties (and ultimate pleasure) of the film lies, you see, in its wavering tone. Although the film copies Wong Kar-Wai's fluid subjective style on occasion in its use of colour and editing, there is an oppressive theatricality as you would expect with a conflict between two protagonists in a fixed set. And while the film concerns some very fundamental traumas, there is a vein of absurd humour that Campion seemed to have lost in her previous prestige costume dramas, but that is gloriously in evidence here, slapstick, unexpected, silly, crude, surreal, wonderful.

This fluidity of forms, of tones, mirrors the identity and gender issues the film raises. Campion's sense of landscape, authentic and in awe, yet laced with both heightened camp and Hollywood melodrama, is unique, further charged in that this mythic Australian space is being contested by Anglo-Americans, as well as Woman and Man. In spite of some flaws - pacing in the second half especially - this is much better than the reviews have been claiming.

Shows Campion In Her True Dark

[heretongan · 7/10 · 2 June 2017]

The ingredients are all here to make this recipe into a winner. It's very much Campion fare with Winslet at perfection (most of the time). However, from the time the protagonist wets herself, we see Campion lose herself in the lush lust of the attraction and she doesn't stop at any time to pull herself out of it and get back to the story.

This movie shows the director's personal thoughts exposing themselves on the screen. She seems to get just as horny as Keitel in directing the movie as his character does in it. She's irresistibly drawn to the sensual and doesn't seem to notice. Pity, because it was such an intriguing first half.

Jane Campion is definitely not a prude and neither is she the least bit uncomfortable about outpicturing her carnal instinctiveness. I just wish she could keep her aspirations separate.

I've seen two movies in my life that were worse than this, and one of them was a porn.

[sansmerci · 1/10 · 20 October 2004]

MINOR SPOILERS HEREIN

I was forced to watch this movie for my Media Criticism and Theory Class. The film looked promising, a great director, two great lead actors who I respect immensely, and an interesting subject matter. The film quickly went downhill. The entire film is stylistically and structurally disjointed. The director didn't seem to know if she wanted to make the film realistic or not, so she just sort of goes into non-sequitor fantasy sequences at random points in the film, most of which just end up looking silly in an otherwise realistic looking film. The whole thing with Ruth's running off and joining a cult would have created more sympathy for her if there was ever any actual explanation as to what the cult was doing or proof that they were actually dangerous. This was never proved and, in fact, the entire religion actually comes off looking legitimate, especially with the fantasy shot in which the guru touches Ruth's forehead and a third eye opens up in her forehead, which suggests that this guru actually does have spiritual powers, which contradicts the rest of the film.

Not that this matters, however, as halfway through the film, the writers decided that the story was no longer about the cult and just made it about this weird sexual relationship between a psychiatrist and his client. Seeing Kate Winslet naked seems to be everyone's favorite part of this film but, as wonderful as that is, it comes out of nowhere and is made ludicrous and disgusting by the fact that she is peeing on herself. And while seeing Harvey Keitel running around in the deserts of Australia wearing a little red dress is certainly entertaining, I really think that, at that point, the audience is laughing AT the film, not with it.

Don't believe these people who try to tell you that this movie is "over some people's heads". These are the same people who think that if anything is weird or doesn't make sense, then it has some deeper meaning that they're missing, so they better pretend to see it so that they look smart. You know, the "Emperor's New Clothes" kind of people. This movie is crap. The characters are unbelievable, the dialogue is pretentious and annoyingly pseudo intellectual, the imagery lacks any form of subtlety and, aside from a few laughs and some good performances from Keitel and Winslet, there are no redeeming qualities to this film.

1 out of 10

Could have been better.

[barberoux · 6/10 · 11 September 2000]

If you are a Harvey Keitel fan this movie is worth seeing. I felt the story was somewhat confusing and wandered towards the end. Ruth, the Kate Winslet character, seemed to be a dippy spoiled suburban girl who finds some emotional depth in India. Given the family she grew up with she could have found emotional depth in a local Indian restaurant. Once she returns to Australia and gets deprogrammed she falls back into her air headed ways. Did the difference between the two states have to be so overstated? I didn't like the Ruth character. Ruth lacked depth but had the curiosity to seek it out. She used her youth, beauty and ripe sexuality to manipulate PJ. I would have been manipulated. She was hot. Her feminist sayings did not have conviction but seemed like repeated magazine slogans. If she was ten years older and didn't look as good nude would she still have the same effect on people? Would the story have been the same if Ruth was in her 40's. Ruth lacked substance but had beauty. Beauty killed the PJ beast.

Funny, perhaps? No, just laughable!

[awillawill · 1/10 · 1 June 2005]

** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS **

This is truly a dreadful movie. If it were intended as satire, it failed miserably. If it was supposed to be a drama that revealed inner (or even superficial) truths about cults and families, it failed miserably at this too.

My wife and I, who watched this on DVD, feared we had rented a "bummer" the moment moment someone's cigarette smoke curled into a rubbish title graphic "Holy Smoke". Out worst fears were confirmed with the appearance of Harvey Keitel looking like a pantomime villain from a daytime TV soap.

The dialogue was laughably overblown and utterly implausible. The idea that women would be falling at the feet and into the bed of the sleazeball Keitel character would require superhuman efforts to suspend disbelief. And would the Winslett character suddenly have switched from contempt to lust in a nanosecond? Of course not.

Cults are a serious issue. Cult busting requires intelligent and sensitive counselling. The Keitel character had neither of these.

There are great cinema stories to be told about cults and cult busting. But Holy Smoke was sure as hell not one of them.

I could go on and on about this wasted effort... (Sigh)

Holy Kate!

[caspian1978 · 6/10 · 7 January 2005]

There is something called necessary nudity. In movies, there are moments where nudity is needed in order to tell a story. Other times, movies will add nudity because it is fun and as an added bonus. In Holy Smoke, the movie deals with the fire / passion in sex and religion. An interesting story told in an interesting setting with some very interesting / yet believable characters. Everything I just mentioned is just scenery. The main attraction of this movie is Kate Winslet. She not only adds to the nudity factor in this story, but the fire she creates in this story fuels the audience to keep watching. Although the story is good, it is better because of Kate Winslet and the smoke she creates from being hot.

What?

[tua14843 · 1/10 · 12 March 2009]

Kate Winslet is in a cult, and its up to Harvey Keitel to deprogram her! Except that after the first day of deprogramming, SHE gets inside HIS head! Yes, after talking up Keitel as the greatest cult deprogrammer in the WORLD, he is put off by Winslet's intense psychological onslaught (taking her clothes off and pissing in the yard), then spends the rest of the movie, LITERALLY, chasing her around and trying to sex with her. Which they do. A couple of times. And then at the end of the movie, they say they love each other, after they yell and cry for awhile and then wind up in the desert and Keitel's wearing a dress and crazy.

This movie was awful.

Can Kate deprogram the deprogrammer?

[DennisLittrell · 8/10 · 15 March 2006]

Kate Winslet plays Ruth Barron, a young Australian woman who goes to India and becomes smitten with the touch of a charismatic guru, so much so that she changes her name and forsakes her family to stay in India and attend to and worship the guru. Her parents become alarmed. Her mother goes to India to trick her into coming back to Australia so that she can be deprogrammed by a professional from the United States that they have hired (P.J. Waters as played by Harvey Keitel).

What director Jane Campion does with this once familiar theme is most interesting. She puts the deprogrammer to the test, so to speak, and initiates a struggle of will between the deprogrammer and his young charge. The key scene arrives as Ruth comes naked into P.J.'s arms in order to test his professionalism (and her sexual power). I don't know about you but I think a naked and passionate Kate Winslet would test any man's motivation and make him think twice about what he really wants to do.

The psychological idea behind the story is this question, What is the nature of the guru's hold on his flock? Is it spiritual or is it profane? Do the young women who follow him desire him as an alpha male or is it spiritual deliverance they seek? Naturally Ruth believes the latter and the deprogrammer the former. But what is the deprogammer's motivation? Is this just a job for him or does he feel he is helping to free his clients from some kind of mental slavery? Or is he just another sort of phony guru himself? Keitel in black hair and black moustache and devil's mini goatee dressed in black with a menacing look and a lot of physical energy (despite being 60-years-old when this film was released) contrasts sharply with Winslet's youthful beauty and beguiling voluptuousness. Strength of character is something Kate Winslet brings to any role, even including her outstanding performance as Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), a role that is usually played wiltingly. Here one senses that her strong will and determination are going to be quite a match for the deprogrammer who gives himself three days alone with her to break her attachment to the guru.

Two questions: One, if he is successful, will that just mean that she has transferred her allegiance from the Indian guru to him? Will it mean that his psychological strength is greater than that of the guru in far-off India? Two, in what respect is such a forced confinement with someone who is in physical control going to lead to a variant of the "Stockholm syndrome" experienced by some women held hostage, e.g., flight attendants on hijacked planes, and the famous case of Patty Hearst? Will the captive become enamored of her captor? Campion handles this most interesting theme by focusing on the sexual and carnal nature of the relationships. The test of will between P.J. and Ruth becomes a question of Can she seduce him and thereby strip him of his professionalism? The movie is candid about sex and sexuality in a way that emphasizes the power dynamics of sexual relationships. There is some full frontal nudity and the sex scenes are steamy beyond what one usually sees in an R-rated film. (If seeing Kate Winslet naked might offend you, I recommend you close your eyes.) Harvey Keitel did an outstanding job in a very demanding role and was entirely convincing (despite being a little too old for the part); but as usual Kate Winslet completely took over the film with her commanding countenance, her superior acting skills, her great concentration and her mesmerizing charisma. If there is a better, more captivating young actress working today, I don't know who she is.

Her role here might be compared with her performance in Hideous Kinky (1998) in which she goes to Morocco to find enlightenment among the Sufis. That is a more charming film, and she is outstanding, but this one gives greater range to her skills.

Notable (and watchable!) as a counterpoint to Winslet's Ruth is sexy and sleazy Sophie Lee as Yvonne who is so taken with P.J. that she fairly begs him to make love to her. Also impressive is Julie Hamilton as the woebegone and stumbling mother.

Of course I would say see this for Kate Winslet, and if you are a fan, you sure don't want to miss Holy Smoke since it includes one of her best performances; however, what really impressed me is the original and daring conception and direction by Jane Campion who is best known for The Piano (1993), a film that received an Oscar nomination for the best direction and starred Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel and Sam Neill.

So see this for Jane Campion who is not afraid to show human nature in the raw.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Absolutely nice body.....Harvey Keitel

[flipdewinterr · 7/10 · 5 January 2005]

Dear people, This movie is certainly not bad. The plot sometimes makes some curves, that's true. But if you forget that and let yourself go with the flow, the movie does a bit holey. A nice story about love, madness and friendship... Pam Grier , who we know from the black movies 'Coffy'and 'Hit man',but also from Quentin Tarantino's 'Jackie Brown', has again a nice little role. Harvey Keitel is best when he is naked with his trimmed muscles. Kate Winslet has indeed a strange but very funny Australian accent, her acting is not superior on that from 'Titanic', but when man sees her body, man can only say: Holey Glory,...or Holey Smoke.

A profoundly stupid film that fails on every level.

[guinness-1 · 1/10 · 20 October 2007]

A profoundly stupid film that fails on every level. Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel do their best to hold together a work of blinding awfulness, but ultimately fail. A complete waste of their talent. Jane Campion badly directs an abomination of a script that wasn't so much written as cobbled together with her sister. Is it meant to be a comedy? Because it fails on that level. Is it meant to be a warm human drama with life lessons? Because it does worse than fail there. Is it meant to be sexy? Because it absolutely is not! Don't waste your time, energy or money. I would stop there, but IMDb insists that I write ten lines. Goodness knows why. I've written everything that I could write. I suppose I could say that the picture stays in focus throughout most of it. And I could say that there are one or two decent pieces of music (although there are also some stinkers).

Things fall apart - spoiler contained

[maggiebh · 19 October 2001]

Be warned that this movie is nothing like the trailer (not a rare story, yet still). The trailer banks on the promise with which the movie starts, but this promise is completely squandered. If it hadn't left me feeling that so much was wasted (including my expectations and time) then I would score it a little higher, but it is a let-down.

I got geared up for a satisfying battle of the wills with strong sexual tension and witty comedy - uh, no. All the hopes you might have for this, entwined with the interesting topics of spiritual belief, family-love, -expectations and -narrowness, and cult deprogramming will be lost quickly. The characters RUSH into sex, and any real interesting issues are suddenly discarded. It just becomes a drawn out mess with 2 lost people clawing at each other and calling each other names. An older man becoming obsessed with a nubile young woman (for some reason she spends an awful lot of time hanging around in a bra) who taunts him with it. Where is his strength? We are supposed to believe that he has worked with 189 other vulnerable young people and his experience leads him to this pathetic breakdown of trust and decency so quickly? And what about the devotion she had for her belief? Gone. This could all be the source of a good dark film, if it was handled and explored well, but it isn't here, and this film doesn't make a good transition to it as a subject. It just left me feeling a bit lost and abused, having watched people being so rotten to one another to no good end (the wrap-up "we're OK now, and better for the experience" ending is just bogus). I got the sense that the filmmakers ran out of steam on this - that there were supposed to be many levels at work, but they just couldn't "keep it up." I saw this with two friends and we talked about it for a while afterwards, mainly because we were trying to salvage the unfulfilled promise of interesting topics opened in the beginning of the film. It left us feeling stranded, needing to talk about it in order to follow through on what the film didn't deliver. We also needed to just get the bad taste of the film out of our mouths.

I see from other viewer comments that people argue that it raises many issues - it does, but that doesn't make it a good film. It opens too many doors and then let's all the good stuff fly away. It's a shame, because the first part really seems to be the opening to a view of cult deprogramming, with Ruth's zany family as a background (that bunch of characters is wasted, which is too bad), and then it suddenly becomes about sex, desperation and nastiness, nothing clever. And the sex isn't even sexy - it's pathetic, desperate sex. Ick. Perhaps this movie is worth seeing, for the things that are brought up - but be aware that it doesn't come near to completing the journey with any of them, and that it is not as clever and funny as the trailer and the beginning would lead you to believe. Be prepared for the characters to fall apart, and to sit through a long period of people being just being mean and debased, until you just don't care about them at all anymore. All too bad - some very talented people were involved in this.

Wholly Smoked

[potterj · 7/10 · 23 May 2002]

Holy Smoke, dir. Jane Campion

This is a very strange movie, combining some real ambitions with downright sloppy self indulgence, and while its suspect heart eventually proves to be somewhere near the right place, its disregard for the intelligence and experience of its audience betrays a major directorial miscalculation. The movie is ambitious in its hinting about the possibility that romantic love may not be the only kind worth having, but then self-indulgent in abandoning this more interesting line of speculation for purposes of promoting what seems like a romantic conflict whose chief raison d'etre is that Jane Campion wants to show us how women can (and perhaps should) win the private battles they have with men and be heroic in the bargain.

I say self-indulgent because Campion fails to give the female in this conflict (Ruth, played with admirable passion and headstrong grace by Kate Winslet) a real opponent, and the conditions under which they come into conflict are themselves suspect from the moment the troubles start. Women win these battles all the time, and heroically, and it is long since unnecessary for artists to go out of their way to make this point again for us. In this, Campion is no better than Spielberg reworking well-worn emotions about the Second World War, and she insults her audience in pretending that we need Campion to make this triumph of womanhood seem possible. Yet, if this is not her purpose, why make PJ, the cult victim deprogrammer hired by Ruth's family to extricate her psyche from the spell cast by an Indian guru she meets on a coming-of-age trip to India, so weak? He is a strange character, equally given to quoting the Bhagadvad Gita and trailer park banalities about love. And not only is his talk unbalanced between high and low ambitions, his behavior is too (he is coming to save the psyche of a young woman, but also, judging from his actions once he arrives, happy to mix in the occasional adulterous action when conditions, and his inclinations, coincide). And he is not convincing as the cult exiter he claims to be. One begins to wonder how he ever succeeded 189 times before in the 3-day deprogramming process if he can't do better than he does in dealing with Ruth, who clearly has him outmatched from the start of their ordeal. In the end he is the one who is deprogrammed, of course, but there is nothing but a cartoon vision of manhood on display once we go looking for the grounds of his frailty, and by then, we no longer are asking why someone specializing in psychic imbalances is so obviously untutored in their own.

A serious storyteller bent on discussing men and women and their relations to each other must bother to let us know why they are coming together, why they are drawn to each other, why they have troubled by what they find, and so on. Campion's answers to all of these questions, as they apply to the cult deprogrammer, are laughably thin. While she gives us a very interesting and rich picture (though incomplete) of what has brought the young woman to this impasse, Campion seems to confirm my suspicion from her earlier films that she is not able to portray men realistically. Perhaps she has no interest in doing so, but it is a handicap here. Harvey Keitel has the chops to portray an intelligent and accomplished male who nonetheless gets himself into absurd and vulnerable situations (cf. "Head Above Water"), but for reasons that must lie in Campion's feminist mystique, he is not permitted to be a complete person. Yet her subject matter requires one. That she proves to have affection for both the broken man and the heroine she employs to break him is small comfort for those of us who can see the much more truthful and powerful story that could be told through these wonderfully intimate and raw emotional scenes Campion shows herself capable of creating over and again in the last half of Holy Smoke. The influence of ideas is too strong in this movie, and it is out of place in a story about people on the edge of themselves. While she had in her hands the makings of a movie as powerful as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, she ended up with a confusing mass of disoriented emotion leading nowhere.

Bizarre, Bizarre, Bizarre

[mail-99 · 7/10 · 11 August 2000]

Kate Winslet is the reason to see this. She is really really good in this bordering on mediocre tale. Campion's story just isn't there and it is neither funny enough to be a comedy or serious enough to be an insightful drama. Watch one of the finer actresses going 'round perfect the Aussie accent. Not many people manage to do that.

top-5 worst movies of the year

[dirk-47 · 1/10 · 17 September 1999]

This movie is definitely the worst I have seen in a long time. Although an OK performance by Kate Winslet and the usual clean-up character by Harvey Keitel (which might work for a support act ...), the movie is a complete disaster. As if you prepare a pudding (the idea), then take away the tin and the whole bloody thing just falls together in itself (story, structure, performance).

Holy Smoke

[jboothmillard · 6/10 · 8 September 2005]

I think the only reason I wanted to see this was because I like Kate Winslet, she's gorgeous, there might be a chance she'd get her clothes off, and this film is the director of The Piano, Jane Campion. Basically religious guru PJ Waters (Harvey Keitel) is hired by a low class mother, or something, to try and change her daughter, Ruth Barron's (Winslet) behaviour and attitude. This daughter is quite hard to control sometimes, and she does some pretty drastic things. As the treatment continues he starts to feel close connection to her, and also develops a feminine side. I can't remember that much of the entire film, but the most drastic thing I remember Winslet doing was burning the barn (where she slept) and coming out of the dark fully naked. Kate Winslet was number 55, and Harvey Keitel number 53 on The 100 Greatest Movie Stars, Winslet was also number 2 on The 50 Greatest British Actresses. Good!

Quirky feminist film

[HotToastyRag · 3/10 · 6 June 2019]

Jane Campion's feminine films appeal to a certain demographic, and if you've already given her a chance and don't like her, you probably won't change your mind. In Holy Smoke, she explores religion, family relationships, and of course, the idea that sex can give women all the power in a relationship.

Kate Winslet puts on a very adorable Australian accent and takes the lead in this quirky '90s flick. She become enamored with a religious Indian guru and abandons her former life in Australia. While she appears to be completely happy being free and finding herself, her family doesn't approve and they hire Harvey Keitel to try and talk some sense into Kate. Of course, since he's a man, they're not able to talk to each other without sexual tension crackling in the air, and they're not able to have a regular conversation without sex getting in the way.

You can give this movie a chance if you want, but if you don't like it after the first twenty minutes or so, you might not want to finish it. The strange filmmaking style and tone of the story are very clear from the get-go.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to sex scenes and nudity, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

Feminine, Masculine and the search of of self

[fcmven · 7/10 · 26 October 2006]

When I need to watch a movie for several times it gets to my nerve to understand why.

This movie I find courageous. You find all mixed themes like age, gender and transient beliefs all together exposed and not judged.

Don't judge, you are human, we' re born and we need to understand why are we here (on earth, in reality) but with all gender and age complexities.

It is hard not to fall in love with Winslet character (or the actress anyway). Her young wisdom, the cynic view of her bourgeois family in middle class Australia gives this youngster a sudden wisdom easy to get attached to.

Harvey Keitel makes a superb strong yet stupidly weak and sensitive macho. But women get their lower ego with Winslet's character cousin. A wanna'be lowlife star digger that can't see the world ahead, a married suburb disaster.

Sorry to get into the story, but this movie is made for a longer reflection than the previous comments I've read.

I highly recommend this picture, specially for people who finds that moment when you look back and feel you have not done nothing with a real value.

It is also a good movie to invite a younger date. Jejeje movie joke

interesting premise no follow through

[rdm911 · 1/10 · 18 January 2000]

it all has to come down not being able to keep ones c... in ones pants, is that what they are saying. a joke of a writing job does nothing to show how kate is broken or anything else for that matter. instead of a film about how and where we get our ideas for campion has presented a farce with no bite...castle like cariacatures of australians without the comic intelligence. poor show, why did it all have to come down to the obvious sex thing, and just sex...boring and not at all convincing.

Wildly creative, A+ for daring

[ptclear · 8/10 · 9 March 2000]

This film is highly misunderstood. Reading some of the reviews I found it hard to believe they were related to the film I'd just seen. This is so much more than a battle of the sexes, it covers lots of ground: boundary in therapy, the legitimacy of mystical experience, the complexities of family dysfunction, the ingenuity of the human spirit when heart and individuality are threatened. I regret that many viewers and reviews seem to have seen the humorous aspect of the film as an indication that the film's themes are lacking in substance. This is a worthy film. I regret that it's not getting its due.

A laugh at Christian fear of cults and family separation

[kimothy-2 · 7/10 · 28 June 2000]

I enjoyed the fear represented within the Christian family about loosing their child to the 'cult', as Ruth's family called it. It was brilliant and dangerous. I admire Campion for laughing at the religious traditions and their lack of openness. Inspiring to any filmmaker!

The WORST movie botch...

[macayle · 1/10 · 22 February 2003]

When I saw this movie, I had rented it for two reasons -- one, because Harvey Keitel is a good actor, and Kate Winslet seems to be at least decent; two -- because it was implied by the back of the video box that Kate Winslet might get naked. ***maybe sort of a spoiler coming up*** Well, the movie started off okay. The story meandered just slightly, but I was still interested. Kate Winslet's character was getting into this Indian religious leader, and I was curious where they were going with that -- and that's good, I should be curious. The problems didn't start there. Harvey Keitel's character was very cool, slightly mysterious, maybe a little creepy, but cool. The problems were not there. Then, approximately halfway through the movie, all of a sudden everything changes. The story they had been building is thrown out completely (and never really resolved), Kate Winslet gets completely darker and more...well, more of a b!#ch. But Harvey Keitel is even worse! At least Kate Winslet's character stayed near the same ball park as before, but Keitel became this raving lunatic, who in no way resembled his character from the first half of the movie. And to top it all off, Kate Winslet did get naked, but I -- being a heterosexual male -- was surprised when I couldn't even enjoy it. Kate Winslet is a beautiful girl, but it was so cheap and dirty, it was not even enjoyable. It reminded me of Showgirls for that reason. Suffice it to say, that considering the two main actors, and the fact that the story premise was good -- this should have been a MUCH better movie if a BABOON were directing it, much more so with an Academy Award nominee. Instead, it became the worst movie I have ever rented -- and I rented "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever", "barbershop", and "Money Train". Dissapointment would not begin to describe...