A woman believes a stray leaf falling into her yard is a sign about the man she's destined to love. Her sister believes she is a star waiting for the world to notice. Neither delusion survives the family reunion that follows.

SWEETIE (1989) is Jane Campion's first feature, and it announces her obsessions immediately: female bodies out of control, families curdled by favoritism, and a camera that finds the grotesque comedy in domestic despair. Kay, played by Karen Colston, has built a small, careful life with her boyfriend Louis when her sister Dawn, nicknamed Sweetie, crashes back into it.

Geneviève Lemon plays Sweetie as a force of chaos, a woman-child whose tantrums and appetites have organized her entire family around managing her. Their father Gordon still calls her his special girl. Everyone else has learned to brace.

Campion shot the film with Sally Bongers, the first woman to serve as cinematographer on an Australian feature, and their compositions favor odd angles and cramped interiors that make the house itself feel complicit in the family's dysfunction.

The film premiered at Cannes and split audiences immediately, too strange for some, too exact for others. It remains a study of how families assign roles, and what happens to the ones forced to play the sane one.