Jane Campion's (THE PIANO) first theatrical feature is a darkly comic look at one odd Australian family's dysfunction. The sexual problems of emotionally withdrawn Kay (Karen Colston) and her spiritual boyfriend, Louis (Tom Lycos), become exacerbated by the unexpected arrival of Kay's overweight, psychotic sister Dawn, aka Sweetie (Genevieve Lemon). Fresh out of the asylum, Sweetie has brought along her "manager," Bob (Michael Lake), a continually zonked-out swinger who nurtures her unrealistic fantasies of becoming a star. As the two completely opposite sisters fight and rampage through the horribly furnished house, their father arrives with his own troubles: their mom has left him to find herself in the outback, as cook for an eccentric band of jack-a-roos.

From a script by Campion and Gerard Lee, the film careens fearlessly into disturbing psychological territory, focusing in large part on the conflict between the animal and spiritual sides of human nature and on the dangers inherent in going too far in either direction. Cinematographer Sally Bongers gives the film a cockeyed, color-saturated, wide-angle look that makes the juxtaposition of cramped living space and desolate open landscapes all the more surreal. Inspired performances and a soundtrack of African spirituals help make this a rewarding, unnerving mix of zany comedy and Freudian psychosexual probing.