NFSA's Kodak/Atlab Cinema Collection: Sweetie

Jane Campion has gone on to become internationally renowned with such varied successes as The Piano, The Portrait of a Lady and Bright Star, so that her first feature film, Sweetie, has tended to be forgotten. Pam Cook's stimulating and scholarly account of this film goes a long way to repairing this situation, offering valuable insight into the way the film came together, the kinds of collaboration this involved, and how it made its name as an arthouse production that keeps surprising the viewer with unexpected stylistic and thematic turns.

Additional keywords: Imagism, surrealism, Frida Kahlo, suburbia, family, dysfunction, Cannes, arthouse, Joseph Beuys, landscape, New Zealand, Australia.