Sweetie
A superstitious young woman's life is upended when her volatile, grandiose sister arrives, exposing the whole family's fault lines and buried loyalties.
Cannes Film Festival, In Competition, 1989
An anxious, superstitious young woman sees her fragile routine collapse when her disturbed and grandiose sister, Sweetie, turns up and takes over the family home. Old parental favouritism and the family's habit of arranging itself around Sweetie's demands come sharply into view.
The film examines sibling rivalry and mental illness inside a closed family system, where one member's disturbance is quietly held and fed by everyone around her. It offers a clinician a study of how a family colludes to keep its shape. It screened In Competition at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.
Director
Jane Campion
Jane Campion is a New Zealand film director known for close studies of women's inner lives and desire. Her films attend to the quiet power that moves between the sexes, and to what is held in voice and in silence. In 1993 she won the Cannes Palme d'Or for The Piano, becoming the first woman to receive the award; she later directed The Power of the Dog.
Details
- 1989
- Australia
- English
- Film