Jane and Anna Campion: Holy Smoke

Filed under: Book Reviews, Chris Mitchell, Novels   

Chris Mitchell

Holy Smoke is the novel of Jane Campion’s soon to be released film, starring Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel. It’s an odd project, not only for being published before the film’s release (which says something about the literary pretensions of the director), but also for being a collaboration between two sisters. Challenging the essential uniqueness of the author is an interesting idea, but the novel suffers from a lack of direction and depth, which may in part be a result of the collaborative process. I can’t help imagining the sisters Campion sitting there squabbling over the pen.

Campion’s major films, (An Angel at My Table, The Piano, Portrait of a Lady) are complex and sumptuous explorations of the intricacies of sexual politics, and, from the evidence of the book, it seems possible that Holy Smoke will be no different. It follows the story of Ruth (Winslet), a young Australian woman who loses/finds herself in a religious cult on a trip to India. When her family get wind of her proposed marriage to the sect’s leader, Chidaatma Baba, they trick Ruth into returning to Australia to undergo some "exit" counselling, courtesy of PJ Waters (Keitel), a starched and sorted American psychotherapist.

With all film-book tie-ins, it’s difficult to see how the latter could be anything other than a skeletal shadow of the former, an afterthought to what was already complete. Having not yet seen Holy Smoke, I can only hope that the film turns out to be meatier than the shadow it casts.

I should mention that the film will involve Harvey Keitel in drag. This alarming prospect is enough to make me recommend the whole project to you, if only to relish the sight of one of Hollywood’s masters of macho ‘method’ acting dealing with a frock and mascara.

Campion is, as ever, excellent at surprising us with the minute power shifts of male/female relationships. It’s never black and white: is PJ the aggressive therapist, obsessed with normalising Ruth and getting his job done, or is he - as the book finally suggests - as susceptible to the intoxication of experience (in this case, sex with Ruth) as Ruth herself? Is Ruth a gullible young woman gagging for the romance of the exotic, or does she really see through the sham that is her suburban family’s consumer-centred existence?

All this is pretty interesting stuff and moves along at a satisfying pace. But the Campions’ novel never rises above the status of screenplay with a bit of added description. It’s very much a Ruth-PJ affair, with the background characters remaining frustratingly slight. Ruth’s voice becomes increasingly irritating with its lazy "blah, blah, blah"s and affected ‘young’ tone. What’s worse is it reeks of Kate Winslet in all her plucky-but-put-upon heroine roles, and, after Titanic, there’s only so much of this I can take. Ultimately, the ideas are there but it’s all executed in a teen-magazine serial style. In fact, it’s already been featured in The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine, which should give you enough of a warning.

Posted on January 1st, 2000.

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