Sweetie

Lucy Guo - Director's Project Analysis #3

**Sweetie** List 10 ways that your director's style shows in the choices that they made through this film:

1. There are closeups of when Kay's walking, as she tries to avoid all the cracks in the cement path. The non-diegetic tribal-sounding music added in this shot gives you the feeling as though something bad will happen if she steps on those cracks. By doing this, Jane Campion's introducing Kay - a quiet girl who has a lot of phobias.

2. Later on, Kay goes to a meditation session, to relieve her of her phobias. When she goes into a trance, instead of feeling relaxed, her mind goes to memories/flashes of her sister, Sweetie, and she instantly wakes up. This scene shows Jane Campion's style to explore the darker sides of human consciousness, and the disturbing nature of some of the things here (even though they're ambiguous, you feel as though there's more to just the shots).

3. Kay visits a fortune teller, who tells her that her soul mate will have a 'question mark' on his face, and in a later scene, there's a closeup shot of a 'question mark' on Louis's head. By showing this, Jane Campion asking us a question about whether Kay should believe what the fortune teller says (especially because Louis just got engaged to Kay's friend), so that if she does choose to try to be with Louis, this shows Campion's style of having the darker side of romance.

4. In this scene, there's a voiceover (by Kay) talking about her phobia of trees, while she's lying on her bed covering her face, and also during wide shots of her walking to the fortune teller's house. The whole movie starts off with Kay saying, "I used the imagine the roots of that tree, crawling right under that house, right under my bed. Maybe that's why trees scare me. It's like they have hidden powers." The director shows long shots of Kay walking and a lot of parallels, as all the trees look the same (monstruously huge and intimidating), making Kay look tiny (and colorful) compared to the trees and everything else in the background, as though it's contrasting her to her phobia. Jane Campion tends to have a lot of earthy and natural imagery in her films, and this is one of them. Also, throughout the whole movie, you can always tell that Kay's being contrasted against the trees in size (and power?), even when the camera's at a low height/angle.

5. Later, after Louis tries to plant a tree in their backyard for their anniversary, she starts acting up because of her phobia of trees, which is also shown when she asks: "This tree's got yellow leaves, what does that mean?" "That's okay, it's just a mineral deficiency." "Well, where will I dry the washing then? What about the roots, Lou? They'll spread in under the house!"

6. Later on at night, Kay decides to go against Louis and she pulls the roots of the tree out. The tone of this scene (blue, gray, white colors + high contrast) shows Kay's phobia kicking in, as she crosses her fingers after getting rid of the tree.

7. This scene is set right after Louis and Kay's first night together. This scene only consists of three shots: Kay and Louis looking at each other, and then the shot of their clothes next to the window, with those voice-over of Kay: “Later I told him about the question mark, and how we were meant to be. He understood. He’d worked out that there were seven spiritual planes, and the kind of love we had, was somewhere near the top.” This short scene has an entrancing visual style, like all of Campion's other films, and the soft light + whole tone of this scene is warm and domestic (orange/white/red colors).

8. After Louis refuses to remove the tree, there's a short animation predicting what the tree would do in Kay's mind. This reflects Jane Campion's style of leaving many things in her movies completely ambiguous, for you to decide on the answer to them.

9. When Dawn (nicknamed Sweetie) suddenly arrives to 'visit' her sister, Kay, she starts creating chaos (e.g. trying to hit on Louis, tearing up clothes around the house, throwing tantrums). Here, Jane Campion's style is shown as she gives examples of the darker side of human emotions, and what they can do to affect your life.

10. During one of Sweetie's tantrums, she convinces a little kid, Clayton, to climb up to the extremely frail treehouse with her. She ends up storming and jumping around the treehouse so much that the treehouse collapses and they fall down, injuring her mother and killing herself in the process. Before Sweetie dies, she starts trying to mention something, but she dies before she could say anything, leaving more ambiguous things.