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"Holy Smoke," "American Beauty" and "Happiness" incorporate all these themes, while pushing them farther than even current TV can. They free the sitcom emotions from the constraints of the 22-minute format and the propriety of network standards and practices. We end up with a new kind of sitcom -- one played out as messy, turbulent, distinctly R-rated real-life drama.

Take, for instance, the portraits of homosexuality in "Holy Smoke" and "American Beauty" -- essentially comic portraits that are nonetheless laced with paranoia and fear. Jim and Jim (Sam Robards and Scott Bakula) in "American Beauty" are terminally happy, fresh-pasta-eating exercise junkies; Tim and Yani (George Mangos) in "Holy Smoke" strut around in chaps and skintight, see-through shirts. At first, these stereotypes seem playful -- not unlike the outlandish, self-deprecating humor on a sitcom like "Will & Grace." But whereas sitcoms trip over themselves in the rush to outdo one joke with the next one, these films are more interested in lingering on the tension or anxiety that produced that joke.

"American Beauty" serves up a throwaway gay-basher joke ("What is this, the gay pride parade?" Chris Cooper's marine asks upon seeing the gay men jogging); "Holy Smoke," a kooky-creepy gay kitsch image (the two bare-chested men playing cowboy games with their nephew). In both cases, our laughter rapidly turns sour. We can't quite figure out if the filmmakers are indicting homophobia or endorsing it -- and we're probably not supposed to. Instead, we're left with a strangely accurate vision of the way homosexuality operates in contemporary mainstream culture -- it is partly tolerated, partly ignored, partly derided.

It seems to me these filmmakers are trying to explore the divided emotions of a society being increasingly (and ever more rapidly) pulled in a multitude of different directions. But it's here, too, that we can distinguish these works from any number of other wildly inventive, off-kilter recent works, such as "Being John Malkovich," "Magnolia" or "Titus." These latter films possess much of the same freewheeling spirit as "Holy Smoke," "American Beauty" or "Happiness." But their outlandishness is never quite reined in. (Indeed, in "Magnolia's" plague-of-frogs sequence, the outlandishness is cast so far out that it's virtually impossible to know how to respond.) As filmmakers, too, Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson and Julie Taymor are looking outward -- toward new technology ("Malkovich"), fate ("Magnolia") or the nature of performance ("Titus").

But in the final moments of "Happiness," when the child-molesting psychiatrist frankly discusses his aberration with his pubescent son, and "American Beauty," when Kevin Spacey's Lester, having just found a way out of his midlife crisis, is murdered, the irony and invention give way to tragic, deeply personal emotions. In "Holy Smoke" this also happens, although with an important difference. Campion's film makes something clear that may be harder to see in the two other works -- her playfulness and abrupt shifts in tone have actually made the emotional release possible. In all three films the seemingly scattershot narrative approaches have yielded an understanding of modern life steeped in truthfulness and intimacy.

In the final 30 minutes of "Holy Smoke," Campion brings all the irony and weirdness into confluence with a deeply sincere emotional agenda -- which is to show human desire at its most frayed and desperate, and to show a younger woman and older man enabling each other to grow more mature and wise. At this point in the film, P.J. has broken the cardinal rule of deprogramming -- he's had sex with his case subject. He and Ruth are at a crossroads: Ruth's family is beginning to get wise to the affair; Waters' wife has shown up on the scene; and yet the two of them need to sort through their emotions before they can move on.

So begins a stark, dazzling pas de deux: Ruth dresses P.J. as a woman, making him up with a red dress and matching lipstick; P.J. writes the words "BE KIND" on Ruth's forehead. She cries; he consoles her. One minute Ruth is in complete control of the situation; in the next P.J. delicately toys with her feelings. Back and forth it goes, with Campion paying precise attention to every subtle shift in the balance of power. And as the situation progresses into ever more bizarre territory -- including a desert chase, P.J. resorting to violence and Ruth even getting locked in his car trunk -- we continue to laugh.

Yet, at this point, it's an almost dizzyingly complicated laughter. Partly, we're relieved after the anxiety of such an intimately wrought sequence. Partly, we view these people with horrified recognition, as they flail, desperate and grotesque, like ourselves in our most vulnerable moments. And partly we just laugh at the farcical, delicious silliness of the situation. The point for Campion, perhaps, is that you can't have one kind of laughter without the other, that it's all part of the rich and schizophrenic stew that is turn-of-the-century life. Her great achievement in "Holy Smoke" is to express the world as most of us feel it -- as flashing moments of comedy and drama, fear and comfort, hostility and empathy, and irony and sincerity, all linking together in a not-quite-coherent whole.

Do these films point in a direction where other filmmakers will want to go? This question is unanswerable for now. There certainly have been other glimpses of new humor -- in the acid-tongued narration of Don Roos' "The Opposite of Sex," in the flights of violent fantasy in David Fincher's "Fight Club," in the high octane war-adventure antics of David O. Russell's "Three Kings." But whether other filmmakers will follow these leads -- and whether they will display the kind of control and authority Campion, Mendes and Solondz show -- is anyone's guess.

Yet a few things do remain certain. Love them or hate them, we have before us three of the most audacious movies of the 1990s; these filmmakers are seeking daring new aesthetic approaches to a new millennium. Perhaps the real question, then, is not whether there will be more such works, but whether audiences are ready for them. Or, to quote Yvonne of "Holy Smoke," just before she goes down on P.J. one lonely night in the desert: "Do you have a Web site?"
salon.com | Jan. 18, 2000

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