Screening times:
Saturday, July 5, 8:30 PM

Jane Campion | Australia | 1989 | 97m
with Genevieve Lemon, Karen Colston, Tom Lycos, Dorothy Barry, Jon Darling, Michael Lake

Though she went on to create a string of brilliant films, New Zealand director Jane Campion will always be remembered for her stunning sophomore feature Sweetie, which focuses on the hazardous relationship between the buttoned-down, superstitious Kay and her rampaging, devil-may-care sister, Sweetie, and on their family’s profoundly rotten roots.

A feast of colorful photography and captivating, idiosyncratic characters, the tough and tender Sweetie heralded the emergence of this gifted director, as well as a renaissance of Australian cinema, which would take the film world by storm in the nineties.

"“Sweetie” is not a family drama or a docudrama of any conventional sort. It looks and feels too strange for that, and there are too many deft touches in the dialogue and sly looks out of the side of the camera’s lens. It is a story with a realistic origin, told with a fresh and bold eye. “In most films,” Campion says, “what people are doing is trying to pretend the shots aren’t there.” Campion and cinematographer Sally Bongers don’t do that. All of their shots are there. Look at the way the little boy in the next yard is presented by the camera. Observe the look of the family’s house and yard. And the feral way Sweetie hides under her blanket and barks at her father. How the movie is seen as part of the experience." - Roger Ebert (writing in 1990), RogerEbert.com

Winner: Best Foreign Film - Independent Spirit Award, 1991
Winne: New Generation Award - Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, 1990

Tickets $12 ($11.40 cash at the door if available). Prices include HST and online booking fees where applicable.