Sweetie is a 1989 Australian black comedy drama film directed by Jane Campion, and starring Genevieve Lemon, Karen Colston, Tom Lycos, and Jon Darling.

Co-written by Campion and Gerard Lee, the film documents the contentious and chaotic relationships among a woman in her twenties, her parents, and her emotionally unstable sister.

[2] The story focuses on a dysfunctional Australian family that includes two daughters: Dawn (nicknamed "Sweetie"), a lively, but erratic, and often delusional woman who fancies herself an actor, and her uptight, sullen, and superstitious sister Kay, a factory worker who has a boyfriend named Louis.

However, the couple's relationship begins to show signs of strain, with Kay uprooting and hiding a tree Louis attempts to plant in their yard because she feels a deep foreboding about it.

After an absence, Sweetie returns home with her druggie lover and "producer" Bob; she then proceeds to intimidate, control, and abuse the other members of her family.

[7] Roger Ebert gave the film 3½ stars out of four, writing "[Sweetie] is a story with a realistic origin, told with a fresh and bold eye...Most movies slide right through our minds without hitting anything.

[8] In a 2015 review in The Guardian, Luke Buckmaster wrote, "The world of Sweetie – a beautifully strange and compelling film debut – is bent out of shape with almost intangibly subtle precision.