Raiders
11-28-2008, 06:43 PM
http://www.popmatters.com/images/blog_art/s/sweetie.jpg
In life, it often seems if you don't deal with an intimate problem when it is manageable, it will almost always grow and morph into an outsized, ugly dilemma for the entire world to see. So it is with Dawn, or "Sweetie" as she is known, and her affect over her family. The film shows us in brief flashbacks her childhood dreams of being an entertainer and her father's inability to not enable her off-kilter and selfish behavior. Now, as an adult, she is a brute and an ogre. The film not-so-subtly shows her cuteness as a child contrasted with her current physical stature. Though it may seem rather callous, the film rather plainly equates Sweetie with an ugly wart on the face of her family, something they have lived with and tried to hide and to understand, but their unwillingness to deal with it head on has only created a cancerous monster.
The real center of the film is Sweetie's sister, Kay, and the first third of the film is focused solely on her suburban existence. We see that Kay is a superstitious sort, and she even steals a co-workers fiancé for her own boyfriend after convincing him it is their fate based on a tea-leaf psychic's advice. In this section, Campion seems to be purposefully dragging out the drama, and we ultimately see that the point here is to show the stunted, muted life Kay lives, and then introduce the agent for this, her domineering, attention-hogging sister.
Kay’s boyfriend, Louie, plants a tree in the center of their patio, hoping it will be a gesture of life and beauty for the couple. But, as the opening narration explains, Kay has a fear of trees. She believes that their roots will slowly grow out of control and crawl under the house, ruining the infrastructure. As Kay herself notes, this fear is located in Sweetie’s “princess fortress” built for her in a tree by their dad when Sweetie was young. The tree both energized Sweetie’s delusions and stunted Kay, the roots of Sweetie crumbling Kay’s developmental infrastructure. Ultimately, Kay rips up Louie’s tree and hides it in the house and the fear of its discovery festers in Kay’s mind. Like the family has done with Sweetie, Kay only allows her fear to grow and feeds into the delusions as opposed to confronting them.
There’s a vibe about the film that to me suggests Campion was going for more than simply a family portrait, but perhaps a societal and suburban milieu drama as well. I never really tapped into anything like that, and I very much often felt on the outside of the film, appreciating it on a more intellectual level than a personal or emotional one. To be sure, Campion’s imagery, from the tree to the little toy animals that the director uses as yet another metaphor for Kay’s fragile maturity and Sweetie’s destruction of it, is assured and resonant. And individual set pieces and mise en scene, such as Sweetie’s demonstration of a simply chair routine treated by her and her father as a glorious act of daring and the father's coffee shop meeting with Sweetie's near-comatose manager, are brilliantly and subtly choreographed. But, there’s just something a little off that left it all a little too muted and bizarre to take at face value, but not off-kilter or jovial enough to find funny or satiric.
But, Campion brings it all together in a beautifully structured finale that is horrifying and easily the most emotional moments in the film. Sweetie’s destructive delusions reach a fever pitch and the father, and the whole family, is finally forced to deal with the monster which they in part created. The ugliness is on full display, both figuratively and literally, and Campion composes the perfect image of Sweetie: shrill and naked sitting in a child’s tree house. And after the “house of Sweetie” comes crashing down, the film ends with two divergent and equally cathartic codas. Kay, with her toy animals repaired, finds a kind of serenity and is finally able to step out of the shadow of Sweetie; her dad, left to clean up the mess, finds the image in his head of Sweetie, serenading and dancing. It’s an ambiguous image, both pure and prescient and leaves the viewer wondering if a father can ever truly see the forest for the trees.
In life, it often seems if you don't deal with an intimate problem when it is manageable, it will almost always grow and morph into an outsized, ugly dilemma for the entire world to see. So it is with Dawn, or "Sweetie" as she is known, and her affect over her family. The film shows us in brief flashbacks her childhood dreams of being an entertainer and her father's inability to not enable her off-kilter and selfish behavior. Now, as an adult, she is a brute and an ogre. The film not-so-subtly shows her cuteness as a child contrasted with her current physical stature. Though it may seem rather callous, the film rather plainly equates Sweetie with an ugly wart on the face of her family, something they have lived with and tried to hide and to understand, but their unwillingness to deal with it head on has only created a cancerous monster.
The real center of the film is Sweetie's sister, Kay, and the first third of the film is focused solely on her suburban existence. We see that Kay is a superstitious sort, and she even steals a co-workers fiancé for her own boyfriend after convincing him it is their fate based on a tea-leaf psychic's advice. In this section, Campion seems to be purposefully dragging out the drama, and we ultimately see that the point here is to show the stunted, muted life Kay lives, and then introduce the agent for this, her domineering, attention-hogging sister.
Kay’s boyfriend, Louie, plants a tree in the center of their patio, hoping it will be a gesture of life and beauty for the couple. But, as the opening narration explains, Kay has a fear of trees. She believes that their roots will slowly grow out of control and crawl under the house, ruining the infrastructure. As Kay herself notes, this fear is located in Sweetie’s “princess fortress” built for her in a tree by their dad when Sweetie was young. The tree both energized Sweetie’s delusions and stunted Kay, the roots of Sweetie crumbling Kay’s developmental infrastructure. Ultimately, Kay rips up Louie’s tree and hides it in the house and the fear of its discovery festers in Kay’s mind. Like the family has done with Sweetie, Kay only allows her fear to grow and feeds into the delusions as opposed to confronting them.
There’s a vibe about the film that to me suggests Campion was going for more than simply a family portrait, but perhaps a societal and suburban milieu drama as well. I never really tapped into anything like that, and I very much often felt on the outside of the film, appreciating it on a more intellectual level than a personal or emotional one. To be sure, Campion’s imagery, from the tree to the little toy animals that the director uses as yet another metaphor for Kay’s fragile maturity and Sweetie’s destruction of it, is assured and resonant. And individual set pieces and mise en scene, such as Sweetie’s demonstration of a simply chair routine treated by her and her father as a glorious act of daring and the father's coffee shop meeting with Sweetie's near-comatose manager, are brilliantly and subtly choreographed. But, there’s just something a little off that left it all a little too muted and bizarre to take at face value, but not off-kilter or jovial enough to find funny or satiric.
But, Campion brings it all together in a beautifully structured finale that is horrifying and easily the most emotional moments in the film. Sweetie’s destructive delusions reach a fever pitch and the father, and the whole family, is finally forced to deal with the monster which they in part created. The ugliness is on full display, both figuratively and literally, and Campion composes the perfect image of Sweetie: shrill and naked sitting in a child’s tree house. And after the “house of Sweetie” comes crashing down, the film ends with two divergent and equally cathartic codas. Kay, with her toy animals repaired, finds a kind of serenity and is finally able to step out of the shadow of Sweetie; her dad, left to clean up the mess, finds the image in his head of Sweetie, serenading and dancing. It’s an ambiguous image, both pure and prescient and leaves the viewer wondering if a father can ever truly see the forest for the trees.