HOLY SMOKE (1999)

Kate Winslet is my favorite actress & I feel happy to see her getting her long dues rewarded this time by Academy Award for her classic performance in ‘The Reader’.
Here she’s once again well nuanced performance of an Australian young lady smitten by her spiritual encounter during her tourist visit to India. She portrays beautiful, sensitive & intelligent Ruth falls under the influence of charismatic religious Baba during her India visit & decided to stay in India forever her life as Sanyasin. Her desperate parents tried all attempts to get her back to Sydney but she refused. They manipulate her with her father’s dying stage & she came back & soon realized that it’s all emotional fraud. The last plan of the family is to hire P J Waters (Harvey Keitel), a macho cult de-programmer who confronts Ruth in a remote desert highway. It’s his task to make her quit her cult following with his successful 3 stage formula. But instead of getting her back, he discovers that she’s kind of women he desires encompassing every experience of life. A young, sexy, intelligent & too hard to crack; in a nutshell she’s a woman with strong convictions. Its good drama but I don’t understand why director shown some bizarre like 20 minutes in the climax with Ruth wearing a red robe & red lipstick of women & chasing Ruth. It’s really worthless. Its end part of the film where the director has just messed up with winding up plot & that’s what I think the most disturbing part of this uncommonly made film.

If anything simply the bliss in the film its Kate & her myriad expressions of moods-innocence, joy, disillusion, anger, mischievousness etc. She’s just perfect blend of beauty plus talent. Like most of her films Kate has done some stark naked scenes in this film too but again she lets you hook to her expressions & not just mere body. Harvey Keitel gave well nuanced performance.

It’s an average drama & don’t get into it if you are not watching this sort of intense drama. As it’s not popular stuff & critically butchered by almost every critic but I found some original handling of theme in it. Watch it for Kate Winslet.

Ratings-6.5/10