It’s always interesting to go back and watch or revisit debut
films and sophomore efforts of stalwart indie directors before they get plugged
into, if not absolutely studio-friendly fare, then at least bigger epics or more
clearly telegraphed tales. It’s this prism that makes the 1989 film Sweetie kind
of interesting.

Long before Peter
Jackson had made an entire generation of slack-jawed American teens care at
least a little bit about geography (if only to know where Orlando Bloom was
doing re-shoots at any given moment), New Zealand-born Jane Campion garnered international attention for her debut feature
film, Sweetie, the eccentric tale of
an Australian girl who stands by while her overweight, messy, delusional sister
moves into the apartment she shares with her boyfriend. A willfully quirky but intriguingly expressive tangle of characters and
wound-up situations ensues, with the two very different sisters — one by
nature solitary and withdrawn, the other dangerously extroverted, overweight and
unhinged — near constantly at odds.

Button-downed, superstitious Kay (Karen Colston) is a serial killjoy whose reliance on fate informs
her stony social demeanor. An outcast at her workplace, she begins to eye a
coworker’s fiancé, Louis (Tom Lycos), after visiting a fortune teller and
becoming preoccupied with her prophecy. Louis and Kay hook up and enjoy a good stretch
together, but things eventually sour. They one day return from an excursion to discover
that Kay’s titular, tubby sister (Geneviève Lemon) has broken into their house
and made herself at home.

Petulant and self-centered, Sweetie is apparently a little
mentally imbalanced — there are hints of her condition’s genetic quality, along
with possible incest — and has gone off her meds. Running roughshod over Kay, she
instantly takes over the place, destroying her sister’s room with her boyfriend
Bob (Michael Lake), who she says is a producer helping her with her music career. Childhood frustrations and recrimination come
rushing back to the fore, along with some of the same sort of symbology and
preoccupation with New Age spiritualism that would later inform Campion’s 1999
film Holy Smoke.

The lazy point of comparison would be the dystopian work of
director David Lynch, but Sweetie
seems much more of a piece with the films of surrealist master Luis Buñuel — Campion is smitten with interpretive imagery
over linear functionality, like Kay digging up a tree in the middle of the
night — and also in some ways a strange precursor to Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl, which similarly delved into sisterly
sibling rivalry, sexual awakening and familial discord. The essence of what’s
under the microscope is interesting, but the
framing and pitch of the movie, though, frequently seem to work against it.

Sweetie’s
restored, high-definition transfer — supervised directly by director of
photography Sally Bongers and approved by Campion — comes presented in a 1.85:1
aspect ratio, preserving the integrity of its theatrical exhibition. A new
Dolby digital 5.1 soundtrack with optional English subtitles makes fine use of atmospherics
and composer Martin Armiger’s score. Supplemental
extras include a candid audio commentary track with Campion, Bongers and
screenwriter Gerard Lee, the self-admitted grump of the group.

Lemon and Colston sit for a nice tandem interview, which also makes use of old Super 8
footage from the set. Campion, too, sits
for a 20-minute conversation from the year of the film’s release with
critic Peter Thompson. The best
inclusion, though, comes in the form of three experimental shorts from Campion’s
film school days — 1982’s An Exercise
in Discipline: Peel, the following year’s Passionless Moments and 1984’s A
Girl’s Own Story. They show a
markedly different filmmaker than the one that still-birthed the inert In the Cut. A gallery of
behind-the-scenes photos and production stills rounds things out, alongside the
original theatrical trailer. C+ (Movie) A- (Disc)