Sweetie

Until its final moments, Sweetie maintains a precarious and sublime balance between comedy and tragedy. The script - ably handled by a splendid ensemble cast - is generously spiced with wry and illuminating moments and is uncannily accurate in its portrait of a volatile dysfunctional family. [02 Mar 1990, p.22]

An acutely defined, starkly realized and profoundly unsettling debut if ever there was one.

Sweetie’s brilliance stems from how Campion inventively explores the relationship between inanimate objects and personal memory, Sally Bongers’s static camera lingering on the precipice of a family unit brimming with secrets and lies.

Sweetie confirms Campion as a highly original movie talent.

In making her first film, Campion has done thrillingly atmospheric work, and in the process, established herself as perhaps the most perversely gifted young filmmaker to rise up in years.

This Australian film by New Zealand director Jane Campion comes at you, and keeps coming at you, in peculiar, oddly enchanting bursts of detail.

Sweetie is imaginatively filmed, but it's sadly mean-spirited, too. For all its cleverness, it left a mighty sour taste in my mouth. [29 Jan 1990, p.11]