Sweetie is a 1989 Australian drama and black comedy film. It is director Jane Campion’s first feature film. It stars Geneviève Lemon, Karen Colston, Jon Darling, Dorothy Barry, and Tom Lycos. The film was entered into the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film in 1991.
The story centers on a family that is sucked into the chaos and destruction of one of its members—the adult Dawn, nicknamed Sweetie. Sweetie, having previously stayed at a mental institution, comes to live at the home of her introspective sister Kay, bringing along her boyfriend Bob. Sweetie’s arrival becomes the catalyst for a lot of familial wounds to surface.
Sweetie contains examples of:
- Addled Addict: Sweetie refers to her male friend Bob as her “manager,” but it’s plain to see he is a barely functioning junkie.
- Ambiguously Gay: At the ranch in the outback, two male cowboys are line dancing closely together.
- Anxiety Dreams: Kay has these about the tree Louis planted in the backyard, and her dark forebodings compel her to uproot the tree, hide it, and claim to Louis that someone else stole it.
- Because Destiny Says So: How Kay lives her life. She gets involved with her co-worker’s fiancé Louis because she believes a tea leaf reading told her she was destined to be with him.
- The tea leaf reader tells Kay she will end up with a man who has a question mark on his face. When Kay goes to her workplace, her co-worker Cheryl announces her engagement to Louis. Louis happens to have a curl of hair that is positioned next to his forehead mole in such a way to resemble a question mark. Kay interprets this as a sign Louis is the one for her and proceeds to steal him way from Cheryl.
- Bittersweet Ending: At the end, it appears Kay’s family is at peace. She and Louis have reunited as a couple. But it’s also suggested that the specter of Sweetie—Gordon has a vision of her in the form of a child—will still haunt the family.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: Sweetie is pure chaos, but Kay also stole Louis from his fiancée and is dishonest with him.
- Cringe Comedy
- The Cutie: Clayton, the son of Kay and Louis’ neighbor.
- Daddy's Girl: Though Gordon realizes Sweetie’s behavior is not healthy, he still indulges her show-business delusions and encourages her attention-grabbing party tricks—one of them being a hilariously simple feat involving a chair.
- Dead Sparks: After about a year together, Kay and Louis’ relationship has hit a rut, to the point they have to schedule sex. Kay tells Louis that she’s started to feel like Louis is more of a brother to her, and Louis also jokes about the changed dynamics of their relationship.Kay: Well, good night.Louis: Good night, big sister.Kay: Don't call me that. I'm your girlfriend.
- Defiant Strip: Sweetie does this towards the end.
- Delusions of Doghood: When Sweetie doesn’t get her way, one of the childish things she does is bark and growl at people.
- Dysfunction Junction: Up to eleven. Kay is very superstitious and neurotic. Sweetie is mentally disturbed with delusions of show business success. Their parents, Gordon and Flo, are having marital problems. They recognize Sweetie’s behavior is a problem, but Gordon in particular also enables that behavior.
- Land Down Under: Gordon, Kay, and Louis head to a ranch in the Australian outback where Flo works as a cook in the hopes she will reconcile with Gordon. The outback scenes are set in very pastoral, wide open spaces where the cowhands happily sing and dance, a stark contrast to the drab suburbs.
- Leitmotif: The gospel choir music from Café of the Gate of the Salvation Choir.
- Look Behind You: Variation. Gordon claims Bob is on the house phone asking for Sweetie as a ruse to get Sweetie out of the car. The trick works and once Sweetie gets on the phone, Gordon, Louis, and Kay speed away and leave Sweetie behind.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Louis.
- Motif: Trees. Kay seems to be afraid of them. At Sweetie’s funeral, a large tree root briefly obstructs Sweetie’s coffin from being properly interred.
- Only Sane Man: Louis.
- Overcome with Desire: Kay meets Louis in the parking lot and tells him about the fortune teller reading that predicts their destiny as a couple. Though Louis, who has just gotten engaged to Kay’s co-worker, is skeptical at first, once he and Kay start kissing, he is unable to stop himself and the couple proceeds to have sex right there in the lot under a car, literally under the nose of Louis' fiancée.
- Playing Sick: As a way to avoid sex with Louis, Kay tells him her cold necessitates that she sleep in the spare room. She continues to sleep there even when her cold goes away.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Kay has an emotional fit when Louis admits he’s lost interest in their relationship.
- Right Through the Wall: Sweetie and Bob are loud when they come to stay at Kay’s, keeping her awake at night.
- Sibling Rivalry: There is no love lost between Sweetie and Kay.
- Sibling Triangle: During a day on the beach, Sweetie comes on to Louis. He doesn’t resist her kisses, but it does not go further than that and is never addressed again.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: While Kay is repressed and paranoid, Sweetie is the exact opposite—wild and uncontrollable.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Sweetie.
- Wham Shot: At the end, Sweetie is seen in the purest image Kay and her parents have of her: a little girl aspiring to be a dancer or singer.
- Womanchild / Spoiled Brat: Sweetie.
- Would Hurt a Child: Sweetie can’t be trusted around kids, particularly Clayton, the little boy who lives next door to Kay and Louis. At the end, during her standoff in the treehouse, Sweetie encourages Clayton to join her. Once he gets up on the treehouse, Sweetie insists on jumping so hard the floorboards start to shake.
