Sweetie

Jane Campion’s wild side was out in full force in her 1989 breakthrough about the love-hate relationship between two odd sisters, which over time has lost none of its radical edge.

Greeted with a chorus of impassioned cheers and jeers when it premiered at Cannes in 1989, this bold, bawdy and often harrowing tale of two sisters announced Campion’s arrival as an uncompromising new cinematic voice. Exploring the fractious relationship between the volatile Sweetie (Geneviève Lemon in a star-making turn) and the introverted Kay (Karen Colston), Campion refuses easy psychology and diagnoses. She challenges audiences to reckon with Sweetie’s increasingly erratic behaviour without the benefit of simple answers, just as the characters in her orbit do. As Lemon herself cheerfully admitted, “Campion wanted [audiences] to be bugged by Sweetie.”