Directed by: Jane Campion
Starring: Kate Winslet,
Harvey Keitel,
Pam Grier,
Julie Hamilton,
Sophie Lee,
Daniel Wyllie,
Paul Goddard,
Tim Robertson
Released: 1999
Language: English
Length: 114 minutes
It
has been said that Femdom is a battle of the minds where the woman enforces her
will on her eager male partner. In this battle of wills, often the weapons that
the female incorporates are sexual in nature. As much as a man may fantasize
about a woman forcing him into submission via physical domination, the reality
is that the battle for control between a woman and a man is rarely about the
physical. The dominant female wins control in the mental and spiritual by
capitalizing on the male’s weakness in the sexual. To put it candidly, sex
gives the female the power.
“Holy Smoke” is a film about
the battle of wills between a macho male and a young, free-spirited woman. In
the end, the physically stronger macho male is reduced to a pathetic shell of
his former self by the sexuality of a strong-willed woman.
In the film, Ruth (Kate
Winslet) is a young girl from Australia on holiday with her friends in India.
Here she is free from family and social constraint and is attracted to the
exoticism of this foreign country. She did not set out on the trip to find
enlightenment, but Ruth is obviously in search of something more, because in
due time she is mesmerized by a guru of some exotic religion in a tent
gathering. Ruth is fascinated with the ritual and falls into a sort of trance
when touched by the guru.
This early scene is
depicted satirically in the film by director Jane Campion. A medium close-up of
a stupefied Ruth staring blankly forward with a backdrop of brightly glowing
yellow light with pulsating graphics floating around her head gives the
impression of a stereotypical New Age experience. The movie is part drama and
part comedy therefore it does venture into the realm of silliness at times but
while, in my opinion, the comedy is weak, the drama between Kate Winslet and
Harvey Keitel is really good. Winslet brings just the right tone in portraying
a naïve and vulnerable girl who is also independent, confident and wise beyond
her years.
The plot is really a
feminist parable. Written with Jane Campion's filmmaker sister Anna, "Holy
Smoke" begins as a satire of the whole guru trip but moves swiftly to a
bold struggle between a macho man and a strong-willed woman. The moment Ruth
and P.J. face off against each other, their struggle is not over cult beliefs,
but about the battle between men and women. And P.J. is no match for Ruth.
Entering wearing all
black from head to toe, the self-confident P.J. boasts of the 189 successful
de-programmings. Ruth’s parents have hired him to deprogram Ruth. She is in
effect taken prisoner by her own kin to be transported to an isolated cabin in
the outback where P.J. is to do his stuff. However, P.J. has his work cut out
for him with Ruth.
Ruth is smart and
forthright, quite up to sparring with P.J. on intellectual and spiritual
levels. Ruth is also young, radiantly beautiful, statuesque in her glowing
abundance; the cumulative impact of all these qualities upon P.J. is
understandably and, not surprisingly, ultimately and profoundly seductive.
Ruth's war on P.J.'s machismo, much to his surprise, stirs within him the
curiosity to go wherever she wants to take him.
Left alone with Ruth,
things for P.J. quickly deteriorate. His weakness is his sexual desire and how
that feeds his ego and machismo. The process of 'breaking' young women like
Ruth (his job supplies him with many opportunities) gives him a great sense of
power. Usually it is only psychological, but in the case of Ruth his desire gets
the better of him.
At first, Ruth despises
P.J. and resists him tooth and nail. However, the self-confident P.J. succeeds
in getting Ruth to question her blind-faith in following the teachings of the
guru. After watching a video about the dangers of blind allegiance to a cult,
Ruth burns her cult clothing and stands naked in the desert outside the cabin.
When P.J. investigates the source of the fire, he is taken by Ruth’s beauty but
he resists her attempt to kiss him. P.J. knows from his past experiences that a
‘client’ is emotionally vulnerable once their belief system is shattered. That
is why P.J. usually works with a partner in order to eliminate temptations when
working with a female client, however in Ruth’s case, P.J. throws caution to
the wind, a sign of his arrogance that he is above giving into temptation.
P.J. likes to think he
is ethical but his ethics are put to the test when the naked Ruth attempts to
embrace him. At first, he successfully resists her advances, but Ruth uses a
psychological ploy to throw P.J. off his game. Ruth urinates in front of P.J,
standing upright in a manner which a woman might administer a golden shower.
P.J. is shocked at this display but when Ruth tries to kiss him again, her legs
wet with urine, P.J. loses the will to resist and he gives into his sexual
desires. We next see P.J. fucking Ruth with Ruth admonishing the macho male
“don’t cum”. And with that, Ruth begins to play on the aging macho male’s
sexual insecurities.
Ruth casts an equally
powerful spell on P.J. as her guru did on her. This is clearly illustrated in
the seduction sequence where the old blues tune "I Put a Spell on
You" plays in the background in a bar they are at. Ruth is dancing and
playing mind games with P.J. After having sex with her, P.J. is smitten with
Ruth but she dances with other men and women at the bar. P.J. plays the
father-figure in lecturing Ruth about getting drunk, but Ruth ignores him and
orders him to get her another drink. Ruth dances provocatively with one of her
female friends, embracing her and passionately kissing her. P.J. looks on with
jealousy in his eyes.
Ruth also allows a group
of males to fondle her in the back of the bar. P.J. flexes his machismo by
forcefully removing her from the situation.
Back at the cabin,
P.J.'s self-assured façade completely disintegrates. He wants to make love to
Ruth again but Ruth toys with him. She tells him that his performance in bed
was sub par and she offers to teach him how to properly kiss a woman. P.J.
tries to regain the upper hand by bragging to Ruth how he was once married to
an attractive supermodel and has lots of experience with women. But Ruth
continues to attack his sexual insecurities and P.J. gives in and allows Ruth
to teach him how to kiss as if he is a virgin male.
Then Ruth pushes P.J. to
his knees and raises her skirt. She commands P.J. to go down on her, again
instructing him how to do it, as if he were an inexperienced virgin and not a
worldly man. Earlier in the movie we see Ruth’s sex-crazed and bored
sister-in-law going down on P.J. We get the idea that P.J. is accustomed to
getting sexual favors from women who are attracted to his macho demeanor. Yet
Ruth turns the tables and has P.J. go down on her. Ruth, of course, does not
return the favor.
Ruth continues to play
head games with P.J., telling him he is too old for her, that he was not very
good in bed, that only weak women would succumb to his sexual advances, and she
uses his desire to have sex with her in order to break him down to the point
that he will do anything she says. The power role reversal becomes complete
when Ruth begins to feminize P.J. Ruth puts lipstick on P.J. and makes
him wear a red cocktail dress, and the macho male gladly submits, losing his
male pride and ego in the process.
P.J. craves her
attention, any attention, thus to him being feminized by Ruth is a pleasant
experience because it involves a form of sexuality. The camera shows us what
P.J. sees as Ruth applies the lipstick and he is awestruck by her beauty and her
determination.
P.J. is feminized,
emasculated and humiliated by Ruth. She even apologizes to P.J. about being so
cruel and heartless toward him. P.J. answers back that he loves being abused by
her and would gladly submit to her cruel and heartless ways.
There is a lot of truth
in this scene as most men would gladly submit to being abused by a woman
because the abuse strips them of their machismo and at the end of the day, the
macho ways of men like P.J. are nothing but a false façade. Jane Campion preaches
a subtle point of truth here, and that point of truth is that most men would
gladly submit to a little abuse and cruelty from a strong woman because there
is something within the male gender that desires to be dominated by the female
gender. Machismo is a defense mechanism to protect the fragile male ego.
Be that as it may, Ruth
is not far enough in her growth as a woman to understand the whys and the hows
when it comes to female domination and male submission. Therefore, she is
confused as to why she has acted so unkind toward P.J., and thus we get a
glimpse into why Ruth was drawn to the guru. She mistook her strong personality
with selfishness and her journey to India was her quest to find meaning. She
wanted to be perceived as being a kind person and the cult fulfilled that need
within her. However, the family intervention and isolation with P.J. made her
confront the real truth about her nature, as well as the battle between the
sexes. Ruth is indeed capable of kindness but she is also by nature a dominant
woman and she takes the interaction with P.J. as a challenge. There is a scene
when after P.J. is feminized, Ruth bounces around the bedroom proclaiming “I
won, I won” and she essentially makes P.J. confess that she is superior to him.
The final scenes of a
psychologically devastated P.J. in lipstick and red dress are meant to show him
as pathetic and Ruth as victorious. Deep down Ruth likes P.J. but she knows she
doesn’t want him to be a part of her future, yet P.J. cannot accept it. P.J.
has to have Ruth in his life and when Ruth ultimately rejects him, he goes
running after her across the desert as he can’t bear the thought of life
without her. When Ruth slaps him away, P.J. loses control of his emotions and
hits Ruth, blooding her nose. Finally in total exhaustion, P.J. is lying in the
desert, dirty, bloody, having lost all of his dignity. In the horizon, he has a
vision of Ruth as a Hindu God. The feeling we get is a depiction of feminist
triumph over machismo.
I believe the movie was
meant to end with the scene of P.J.’s vision of Ruth. However, someone (I
seriously doubt it was Campion or her sister) made the mistake of adding two
additional final scenes. We see P.J. riding in the back of Ruth’s brother’s
pick-up truck, totally defeated, and Ruth has her brother stop the truck so she
can climb into the back with the broken man. Ruth comforts him, showing him
(and more importantly her self) that she indeed is capable of kindness,
demonstrating the dual female nature of dominance and nurturing. I could have
accepted this alternate ending but the producers had to go for one final scene
to soften the feminist imagery of the film and bring it down for a safe
mainstream landing.
The movie ends with one
of those “one year later” scenes to show Ruth and P.J. as “pen-pal friends who
love each other from a distance” as P.J. is happily married with newborn twins
and Ruth is back in India with her mother doing charitable work. They should
have left well enough alone and stayed with the original ending, in my opinion,
but I guess the producers struggled to find an ending where both characters
come across as winners in this unique portrayal of the battle of the sexes.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed
“Holy Smoke”. The psychological clash between Ruth and P.J. will appeal to
those who read my blog because it accurately portrays the power a sexual woman
has over a man, no matter how tough or rugged that man may seem on the outside.
Yes, it is a feminist parable but I believe it is also a Femdom parable. While
not perfect (the comedy didn’t work for me), overall I definitely recommend
this film. I caught it on the IFC (Independent Film Channel). I’m sure it will
be on again in the near future.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
