In Jane Campion's directorial debut, I saw the seeds of her greatest film (The Piano) and her not-so-greatest film (Holy Smoke!). There were moments of near perfection, most notably in some dreamlike montages that help more than normal expository scenes to get the viewer into the head of the characters. There were other sections, however, where I found myself looking at the timer on the VCR and wondering how long the movie was (97 minutes). Although the main character is Kay (Karen Colston), a neurotic woman who doesn't get along with her co-workers and depends on tea leaves and coin flips to determine her destiny, the focus of the film is on Sweetie (Genevieve Lemon), her mentally ill sister who commands attention like a car alarm.

Kay is living with Louis (Tom Lycos), a man who a seer told her was her destined mate. She's not happy, though, mostly because she operates at the emotional level of a teenager. Louis, in an attempt to do something sweet, buys a small tree and plants it in their backyard. Kay refuses to tell him that she has been plagued since childhood by nightmares of trees, and simply sneaks out in the dead of night to uproot the thing and hide it in her closet. The next day, she moves out of their shared bedroom without ever explaining why. I watched the film thinking that Louis was either a saint or a moron, putting up with her oddities and casual meanness.

Things seem to be in a holding pattern until the arrival of Sweetie, who has stopped taking her medication and wants to be an actress. She moves in along with her homeless boyfriend Bob, who claims to be a producer. There is obviously a lot of baggage between Kay and Sweetie. Sweetie was the favorite child, outgoing and talented, while Kay was always shy and morose. Sweetie is caught in a perpetual nine-year-old's emotional state, though, and she forces the people around her to deal with her on her own level. For example, she gets angry at Kay when Kay wants her to leave, so she runs off saying "Now I'll do something terrible," and proceeds to devour several of Kay's prized porcelain horse statues. Louis is forced to treat her like a spoiled child to get her to spit them out, and Sweetie is suddenly welcome at the house, which is what she wanted in the first place.

There is a subplot involving the separation of their parents. Their mother travels west to a kind of surreal ranch, where cowboys dance with each other but never speak. The scenes at this place are the best, especially after Kay and her father (John Darling), with Louis but without Sweetie, arrive.

The film is a sometimes gripping, sometimes funny, and sometimes maddening portrait of a family that cannot deal with their internal problems. The father says at one point that "This is a family matter, and it will be solved in the family." The film is a perfect antithesis to that idea, because in a situation like this, things just build up until they explode. Nobody learns any lessons, and the problems are never solved.