Holy Smoke

(Miramax)

This Jane Campion effort (the screenplay and tie-in novel were co-written with her sister Anna) would be a mess without Kate Winslet as a young Australian woman of no fixed beliefs who finds that her vacation to India has become much more when she crosses eyes with a guru and eternity opens up. Her doggedly bourgeois mother (a priceless Julie Hamilton) tricks her back to the Outback, where she undergoes deprogramming from an American expert (Harvey Keitel at his most truculent and disreputable and saddest). The subsequent battle of the sects and sexes is less interesting than the actors' moments of inspiration and Campion's flights of fancy.