Opens December 3, 1999

Whether it's the interplay of a plain jane and her sociopathic sister in Sweetie or an intense triangle of passion in The Piano, director Jane Campion has made a career of exposing dysfunction in the human condition. So, it comes as no surprise that her new film Holy Smoke features two singularly lost souls, one a young, sensual cult devotee and the other her older, emotionally remote deprogrammer.

Campion's work is always provocative, even though it doesn't always ring true. That is certainly the case with Holy Smoke, which tries to explore too many issues and ends up muddling them all. The trouble starts with the set-up itself where we find Australian free spirit Ruth (Kate Winslet) in India with a friend. There, Ruth insists on visiting a guru and, upon being touched on the forehead by him, she has an emotional epiphany and decides to become a member of his ashram. Ruth's friend rushes home with the news, which leads Ruth's mum Miriam (Julie Hamilton) to journey to India, determined to save her baby from this cult.

The problem here is that the so-called "cult" of which Ruth is a member doesn't seem all that cult-like. Ruth is neither brainwashed nor preaching some new gospel. If anything, when Miriam visits her, she just seems like a normal twentysomething, smoking a cigarette and wearing a sari. We also never really understand exactly what Ruth was missing in her life that she became so suddenly devoted to the teaching of her guru. Nonetheless, Miriam is convinced that her daughter is in danger, so she manufactures a story about Ruth's dad being on death's door and forces her child to return home.

There, surrounded by a family so quirky it would make John Irving proud, Ruth is faced with some cold, hard facts. Mum and dad, who is quite healthy, have hired an American cult deprogrammer named P.J. Waters (Harvey Keitel), who promises to have Ruth back to her normal self in three days. My suspension of disbelief really took a nose dive here because all I could think was: Is it really possible to deprogram a cult member in as little as three days, especially if she's as mixed up as Ruth is supposed to be?

Nonetheless, P.J. drags Ruth out to a hut in the outback where he sets about breaking her spirit, first by gaining her trust, then by destroying her conceptions about her new-found religion. Here's where things get both interesting and foggy. Campion has set out to create a unique relationship between Ruth and P.J., in which power, sexuality and trust all play a part. At first, P.J. is Ruth's master, wielding his control with gentle insistence. But, soon, Ruth comes to see her own power and uses her sensuality to seduce him, proving him to be nothing more than a desperate creep in cowboy boots and pressed jeans. Of course, since we don't really know much about P.J.'s past, we are never really sure if he's desperate or a creep. Campion tells us he is and so we are expected to believe it. (What happened to character set-up? I found myself bemoaning in the theater.)

As Ruth comes out of her fugue, P.J. descends into one of his own in which Ruth is now his goddess, a creature of infinite power who can control his future. Both P.J. and Ruth are destroyed by their journey together. Their bizarre interlude of love and mutual salvation is colored by resentment and desperation. In the end, they are irrevocably linked like wounded soldiers in a never-ending battle of the spirit.

Now, there are without a doubt some intriguing issues raised here. While Ruth is transported by the guru's touch, P.J. finds his own revelation in Ruth who he calls his "avenging angel." Yet, Campion never really gets to the heart of the matter here. P.J.'s transformation from emotionally unavailable professional to crumbling, raw man is awkward and somewhat unbelievable. He is, just as Ruth says, a "dirty old man." Likewise, Ruth's abandonment of her religious conversion is too easy and her seduction of P.J. seems implausible, especially because it is grounded in her reasoning is that she can use her power over him to "get free."

Then, there's my own personal gripe. When will filmmakers get over the May-December romance? Watching nubile young actresses cavort with fiftysomething men is getting tired, folks, and I for one would like to see some relationships based less on the fascination with age differences and more on the basic emotional life of the characters. So much of Holy Smoke. is tied up in the age dynamic that it takes away from the more interesting ideas of sexual power per se and the need we all have to be saved. While the dynamic here wouldn't have been the same with a younger male actor, it would have been more believable to say the least.

As a whole, this film fails to deliver. Campion has a lot of ambitious ideas, but she muddies the water with secondary story lines and a lot of inspired, but nonetheless out-of-place wackiness among the family members and their bizarre outback existence. Despite the gentle and complex performance of both Winslet and Keitel, the emotional world of Holy Smoke never registers as authentic and you are left to wonder if you missed something in the viewing. The answer is: No, you didn't miss a thing because the deeper meanings simply aren't there.