HOLY SMOKE --*1/2 -- Kate Winslet, Harvey Keitel, Julie Hamilton, Sophie Lee, Tim Robertson, Dan Wyllie, Paul Goddard, Pam Grier; rated R (profanity, sex, nudity, vulgarity, drug use, violence); exclusively at the Loews Cineplex Broadway Centre Cinemas.
There's an easy way to distinguish between "artsy" movies and "pretentious" ones.A film like "The Talented Mr. Ripley," with its many homages to the works of Alfred Hitchcock and its beautiful use of jazz music, is artsy.
On the other hand, the post-feminist dark comedy "Holy Smoke," with its many heavy-handed allusions and even more clumsy posturings, is pretentious.
In the latter instance, that can't be considered a huge surprise since the movie comes from filmmaker Jane Campion, whose best-known works have been the vastly overrated 1993 drama "The Piano" and the unbelievably dull 1996 adaptation of "The Portrait of a Lady."
Worse, this laughable (but not in a good way) movie claims to be based on a novel by Campion's sister, author and co-screenwriter Anna. But it's little more than a revisionist version of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" without the clever wordplay.
If that isn't bad enough, the film also features one of the worst -- and also least appealing, if not least believable -- on-screen pairings in a long time -- Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel.
Winslet stars as Ruth Barron, a young Australian searching for enlightenment in India. She appears to find it in the person of a charismatic guru who persuades her to stay in the country.
Needless to say, Ruth's rather conservative family is horrified. In fact, they're so concerned that her mother (Julie Hamilton) travels to India to bring her back -- armed with the lie that Ruth's father is on his deathbed.
When that plan fails, Mom actually has a panic attack, which achieves the desired effect anyway. And as Ruth returns Down Under, the family hatches the second part of their desperate scheme: bringing in a slick American cult deprogrammer, P.J. Waters (Keitel), to wrest her from the yogi's "control."
Unfortunately, Ruth isn't the most willing subject, and it appears that in this test of wills, it may be P.J. who winds up on the losing end of things.
This isn't the worst setup in the world -- though again, as it wears on, elements of "The Taming of the Shrew" become more and more apparent. And in Campion's hands, it quickly goes awry with weird, campy subplots that could have come out of a John Waters movie.
Believe it or not, things would be even worse if not for a brave performance by Winslet, who makes Ruth the only character anyone might remotely care about. Keitel, on the other hand, is a ludicrous sight here, right down to the scene in which he wears a dress. (You read correctly -- a dress!)
Not that the supporting performances are all that great either. As Ruth's parents, Hamilton and Tim Robertson come off as being mousy and unpleasant, respectively, while Sophie Lee is even more irritating as Ruth's loopy, nymphomaniac sister-in-law.
"Holy Smoke" is rated R for rampant profanity, graphic simulated sex and sexual acts, male and full female nudity, use of crude slang terms and gestures, simulated drug use (marijuana) and violence (a scuffle).